Breathe easy, my comrades. You will not be forced to read about the dreaded E-word while pretending to pay attention in your Friday morning lecture. There will be no mention of Obama, McCain, Palin, or Biden, no mention of booths, or fraud, or turnout, or analysis — well, except those mentions.

All of you who survived the last week of campaign coverage without having an epileptic fit deserve a federal tax credit for therapy and Xanax.

I know the CNN “first polls close” ticker nearly took me out. I kept mistaking it for a countdown to the apocalypse.

But I made it through, baby.

And I voted. I voted in my first general election.

The exercise of democratic rights didn’t live up to all the hype. I was expecting St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, my polling place here in Tompkins County, to be outfitted with the latest in computerized voting gadgets. Instead of a touch screen, I came face to face with a turquoise lever machine that predated Woodstock. This proved complex for a member of Generation iPhone.

The anticlimax, nonetheless, wasn’t just in the low-tech act of voting.

This animal — Government major, news junkie, and genuine former debate/Junior State of America geek — had spent the past eight years marinating in the peppery juices of election coverage before being thrown onto the grill.

In November 2004, mid-marinating, I was a senior in high school and nine months short of turning 18. Nonetheless, as co-president of the Lake Forest High School Congressional Debate Team (if this has not yet been made abundantly clear, I didn’t get into Cornell because I was cool), my life essentially became devoted to all things election.

As the more liberal of the two co-presidents — that is to say, the one who grew up with deep notions of social welfare policy and owned a politically subversive “check out my Bush” thong featuring the President’s head — I was relegated to the impersonation of John Kerry at the high school’s mock presidential debate. I wore a sweater vest and explained that I wasn’t an elitist before an auditorium filled with Republican parents. The irony’s not lost on me since at the time, I was:

a. Canadian

b. As excited about Kerry as I was about, say, the gynecologist

c. Far enough to the left that McCarthy rolled in his grave

My politics haven’t changed much since high school. I’m still waiting for the revolution.

What has changed is my ability to express political support for the Che or, all else failing, the next viable alternative.

Before July 2006, I was in democratic purgatory. Between Barack and a hard place, if you will. You see, the neat thing about having a Green Card is that you’re effectively disenfranchised in two countries. In my family’s case, voting in Canada was impossible due to our American residency. And we couldn’t vote in the United States because we were non-naturalized immigrants.

But I became an American citizen on a sultry July morning in 2006. It was a radically unchanging moment except that it gave me an extra passport to worry about losing and, yes, the coveted right to vote.

The hard pews in the Cook County Courthouse were filled with proud families from Mexico and Poland who had dreamed of this day. In one of the middle rows, I twitched impatiently throughout the Naturalization Ceremony, anxious for this awkward moment to pass.

My parents had not crossed the Canadian border on mooseback on a dark night in 1997. They put us on a plane to Memphis, moved us into a respectable house, enrolled us in private school, and painlessly obtained Green Cards. We weren’t sending money back to our destitute relatives.

Sitting in that courtroom, I was fresh from a year of Cornell and five idyllic years in suburban Chicago. I was about as American as I was ever going to get. No certificate (and passport, obtained upon subsequent payment of an additional fee) was going to transform my sense of national identity.

In the US, I continue to fly under the radar. I wear the right jeans. I say things like “definitely” and “dude.” I drive a Jeep. I drink beer. And now, I vote.

But if the ceremony felt like a farce, the lengthy process that preceded it was administrative equivalent of a bad “knock-knock joke.

Becoming naturalized entails an interview for immigration officials to determine foreigners’ “suitability” and potential American-ness. Said interview involves a citizenship test.

As I had taken A.P. U.S. History in my American high school and had, with the exception of Chemistry, never failed an exam, I wasn’t overly concerned with my ability to pass. My mother, however, was, as well I can translate this from the entirely French Canadian notion for “capoter,” freaking out. It was amusing to psyche her out with tidbits from the 100 potential test questions that could come up on that day. Some of them were pretty basic, like “How many representatives are there in Congress?”

A few were downright weird, like “Who wrote the Star Spangled Banner?” and “Why did the Pilgrims come to America?”

“Who has the power to declare war?” proved a real stumper since the government apparently has yet to work this one out.

When the fateful day came, the Girardin-Lefebvre clan aced the exam.

The fact remains that a vast swath of the American population — people who were born here, raised here, learned to fear God here — could not have answered those questions. As far as I understand, they don’t send you to Mexico if you can’t name the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

They let you run for office.

They let you vote.

Did you?

Andi Girardin is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at agirardin@cornellsun.com. Raisin d’être appears alternate Fridays.