A bright-faced child enters a Greyhound bus filled to the brim with her fellow eighth grade classmates. A cacophony of excited voices welcomes the girl as she takes her seat next to the window. As the bus takes off in a northeast direction, the realization of the trip finally sinks in. The eighth grade trip to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is actually happening; good bye parents, good bye school, good bye homework. This trip represented getting to hang-out with friends, to eat all the junk food in the world, and to just have fun. The girl had no idea that once in Philadelphia she would enter into a world entirely different, that of post-revolutionary war America. She walked the cobbled streets that Benjamin Franklin had once strolled on himself, she perused Independence Hall in astonishment, and got to run up the Philadelphia Museum of Arts stairs like Rocky (yes, this had nothing to do with Revolutionary America, it was just fun). She saw the giant crack running up the Bell of Liberty and, the best yet, she got to see the Constitution of the United States of America (after a ridiculously long wait). It read "We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union." .
That eighth grader just so happens to be me, the now college student trying to understand our Nations past and how it links to our present. The U.S. Constitution was written in 1787, by silly looking men in their white powdered wigs and stockings, as a form of government meant to guide this once new country in a European driven world. The Constitution has been used throughout our Nation's history. Through the Civil War, to the Civil Rights Movement, to our current battle of gay marriage. Though the document has add several additions (the Bill of Rights and its amendments) over the 228 years since it was written, the U.S. Constitution is still a relevant document. The Constitution still relates to our current contemporary issues.
