Just before midnight, my friend and I headed Downtown to share a celebratory drink. As we neared the Capitol Square, we could hear cheering and soon found ourselves amid a crowd of several hundred spontaneously assembled students marching down State Street.

We gathered on Bascom Hill, in front of the statue of Lincoln, cheering and chanting "Yes we can!" and "USA! USA!" Before this electrified drove of students dispersed, we sang the national anthem. On our way back up State Street, I asked some bewildered police officers if this was planned. "No," they said, "it just happened." I've never seen anything like it.

The 2000 presidential election is the first I remember, and the Bush presidency has been my primary reference point as I've become politically aware.

For the last eight years I've felt as if we, as a country, have lagged behind history, and I've craned my neck to look beyond the bitter partisanship and antiquated political consciousness in which I've grown up.

Tuesday we caught up, and I watched a new leader rise on the crest of a powerful electoral wave I hope will wash away a brand of pettiness that did not deserve America.

In his victory speech, President-elect Obama spoke to unity and the American spirit. He said, "to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright, tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth but from the enduring power of our ideals -- democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope."

I look forward to Obama taking his electoral mandate and executing a transformative yet steady administration.

But his election alone is enormously symbolic -- for who he is, and more importantly who he is not. Obama will be the first president of America's coming of age.

Where our past couple of presidents have seemed misaligned with a new era of globalization, simultaneously grounded in the bitter politics of the 1960s and 1970s, Obama stands unscathed by and un-tethered to the tumult of the Vietnam era, which still manages to fuel so much of today's partisan rancor.

After the major news outlets called the election for Obama, a friend from Michigan called to tell me his overwhelmingly conservative county was neck-in-neck for Obama.

I said that clearly we are not our parents' generation, and I felt that sentiment among the students with whom I marched Tuesday night.

I know he is 25 years my senior, but I think Obama is more truly the first president of our generation. There was such energy in that crowd, such an overwhelming sense of political rejuvenation and optimism, and if I could speak for my peers Tuesday night, I'd say "We've got it from here."

Collins, of Madison, is a senior majoring in political science and journalism at UW-Madison.