On Tuesday, Nov. 5, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off in an unprecedentedly fluid presidential election. Unless you are the rare political enthusiast who has a deep understanding of domestic affairs, chances are this election process has been difficult to follow. 

Personally, I’ve never been that involved in politics — not because of a lack of interest but purely out of laziness. Having enough opinions, context and knowledge to engage in political discussions takes motivation I didn’t believe I had — until this election. 

There’s so much fake news, exaggeration and media bias out there that forming my own, unprejudiced political opinions, which has always been a goal of mine, didn’t seem feasible. But with so much media attention this political season, I decided to make this goal a reality. All I wanted was to be in the know. 

So I started by attending Upper School Director John Schafer’s lunchtime session on Tuesday, Sept. 10, which was on “How to Follow the Election.” From there I learned two things. 

The first is that I have to be conscious of the biases that come from the area we live in, since it’s primarily left-leaning and that no source is going to give completely neutral information. To be aware of this means to seek out generally unbiased sources, but also to be conscious that all stories will have some sort of preexisting partiality.

My second lesson that day was simple: it’s easy to find election information if you’re willing to put in the time and effort to listen to others who are more politically informed than you — while keeping in mind their political biases, of course.

The next stop on my path to being able to consider myself “politically informed” was to conduct some basic research. I couldn’t just go anywhere, though, and I couldn’t just collect my information from a single source. I decided my best bet was to sign up for the news sources that Menlo provides, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times (go to the “Databases” page on the library website for access information).

I realized that a technique I could use when researching was to read the same coverage of a single event on multiple platforms. This way, even if some of the sources had certain types of bias, I could find truth in the facts that aligned in all sources. 

However, I barely have time to complete the tasks that are necessary for me to accomplish, so finding time to research political events and characters purely for my own enjoyment and self-education was not always feasible. This meant that I needed to find information through more digestible, yet still reliable, outlets. 

Take the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, which took place on Tuesday, Sept. 10. I could either watch the debate in its entirety and give up 90 minutes of precious time on a weeknight or spend that 90 minutes on homework or sleep. Long story short, I chose sleep.

But that decision didn’t mean I had lost my chance to engage in this historic event. Following along after the fact is as simple as searching up the highlights on a reliable news platform. 

As we near election day and political tension builds up, it seems that my workload does as well. But I decided it was worth it to put time into forming my own opinions — not my parents’, not my friends’, not my teachers’ and not the media’s. If I accomplish this, I’d consider myself successful. Next time someone asks what I think is going to happen on Nov. 5 or what I hope will happen, I’ll have something moderately intelligible to say.