Of course [I'm a feminist]. And everyone I know is a feminist.

Service is an opportunity for young women to really empower themselves.

For most young Americans I know, 'serving' in the broadest sense now seems like the only thing to do.

My parents were very firm about me always getting my homework done.

Over the summer I thought that I would seek out non-Americans as friends, just for diversity's sake. Now I find that I want to be around Americans - people who I know are thinking about our country as much as I am.

That's not what I want my children to hear. That's not representative of the country that I want my children to grow up in. And so that actually I found far more upsetting as a mom, as a woman, as an American, and even as my mother's daughter than anything they said about my mom.

I just hope I will be as good a mom to my child and, hopefully, children as my mom was to me.