Whenever Kate Maxwell was not in class over the past couple of months, she was probably working on the McCain campaign.
From the beginning of the school year until Election Day, Maxwell's life was heavily identified by politics. Even though her candidate didn't win, she said she would do it all over again.
"We'd do it all again in a heartbeat," Maxwell said, referring to herself and the other College Republicans, who could be found calling Blacksburg citizens almost around the clock, going door-to-door to get out the vote and organizing numerous events featuring campaign surrogates at the Republican Headquarters.
Maxwell was one of many campaign workers who struggled to balance school and politics. She was the political director for the College Republicans Federation of Virginia, but she's also a junior political science major.
"I definitely missed a good amount of class this semester -- I'm sure my professors could tell you," Maxwell said. "We were working right up until the end. It was pretty crazy."
In retrospect, she said she would have done many things differently throughout the campaign. But she'll have many more opportunities to work on campaigns, as she plans to stay involved in politics. She will campaign for a candidate in next year's race for Virginia governor and attorney general, and she's running for chairwoman of the College Republican Federation of Virginia.
Dan Geroe, the president of Tech's Young Democrats chapter, has also been busy over the past few months. He has been behind President-elect Barack Obama since the primaries, but the Young Democrats didn't support a specific candidate during that time.
"I would try to convince my friends more in private," Geroe said.
By the time Obama was offered the bid to run for president on the Democratic ticket, Geroe was home for the summer. He returned to Blacksburg to a level of excitement and involvement he didn't anticipate.
"This year was really amazing," Geroe said. "I've never seen the kind of involvement both from a student body or from a campaign before."
Geroe said the Obama campaign's ability to out-organize the McCain campaign had a major impact on the election.
"Obama's massive outreach abilities (was) pretty much was the most important factor in this race," Geroe said.
In addition to canvassing, organizing many political events on campus, and performing various other duties for the Young Democrats, Geroe, a senior, was taking 4000-level courses during the campaign. He was also applying to law school. He slept about four to five hours, sometimes three, every night. On the Wednesday following Election Day, he skipped classes.
"It was just such a relief that I don't think I woke up until four in the afternoon," Geroe said.
Although he didn't let his school life suffer and said he couldn't ask any student volunteers to skip classes, he found other ways to sacrifice.
"Don't skip your exams," Geroe said, explaining what he told other students who campaigned for Obama. "Embrace the fact that you've got an education. Instead of sacrificing your school time, try to sacrifice the other stuff."
"The other stuff" was social time and relaxation, Geroe said.
He only had positive remarks about the College Republicans and McCain supporters in general, but he said they implemented more of an old-fashioned campaigning style.
"I think they kind of did the same stuff that we did, just on a smaller level with the smaller staff that they had," Geroe said. "College Republicans worked as hard as they could. They did their best with what they had."
But Geroe said Republicans ran the same campaign they've been running for the past 20 years, which wasn't as effective this year. The Democratic candidate for president had more money than the Republican for the first time in that 20 years, and there was a higher "general excitement level" this year for Obama, Geroe said.
Chris Cox, Tech's chapter coordinator for the Students for Barack Obama, contributed to that excitement level. To him, campaigning for Obama was more important than going to class.
"I think that this election and the changes that are going to be made will define our generation," Cox said. "I never felt like I had done enough."
Cox admitted he skipped a lot of class throughout the campaign.
"The last two days before the election, I just didn't go," Cox said. He made calls to voters, canvassed, and organized many on-campus events himself or alongside Geroe.
His organization and the few others that registered students to vote managed to sign up 6,000 students on campus. They put in hundreds of hours for campaigning that could have been spent going to class, doing homework or hanging out with friends, all three of these political leaders would have had it no other way.
"I think you can ask anybody who was involved in the campaign -- every bit of it was worth it," Geroe said.