As we close in on the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s election into office, it looks like the 44th president of the United States has finally graduated out of the “honeymoon” stage that had so many of Obama’s opponents complaining about preferable treatment.

From battles that have been waged over health care to Saturday Night Live skits poking fun at the Obama administration’s shortcomings and our president’s failed attempt to bring the Olympics to Chicago in 2016, it seems like the White House just might be getting as much negative press as it had during the Bush days. People are losing patience with the state of national affairs and the economy, and they’ve begun questioning the direction the United States is taking in regards to Afghanistan. Many have serious issues with Obama’s plans to revise our nation’s health care system.

Yet with all this criticism and blame that has been directed at our leaders, it surely cannot hurt to remember the famous words of John F. Kennedy, our 35th president, who remarked to all Americans, “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Some reflection would show that many Americans still splurge with their credit cards and spend far beyond their means. How can so many demand an improved health care system, when we have already shown how little we care for our health from the size of our waists, the lack of time we afford for physical education in schools and the overall lack of care for our personal health?

We complain about the bad teachers we had in high school, but now that we’re in college we go out early Thursday nights instead of staying in to work a little harder and make up ground in our weakest subject (by no means am I saying don’t go out on Thursdays, by the way — you really should). Yet still, here we are, asking the government to fix these sorts of problems when as a society we haven’t even accomplished our goals.

If our government is meant to represent the people who put it into place, then on the bright side, perhaps it is representing us well.

On an individual basis, we must set the example in our daily lives of what our priorities are in order to get real government action going. The greatest movements start small, start local, and it might be high time for us, as Americans, to stop looking for “Change We Can Believe In” and actually start making the change happen ourselves.

Having a better diet, putting aside more time to spend studying and not treating our M&T cards like Visa Blacks would do a lot better for our quality of life than anything Barack Obama could do in the White House.