Working on a losing campaign is discouraging, disillusioning, and unimaginably disappointing.

For the past two and a half months, more than 50 students worked for Andrew Barnhill’s state senate campaign. We were recruited by campaign manager Dakota Cary in late August when he came to speak in all the political science classes full of idealistic young Democrats. We worked 15 hours a week, every week, making phone calls and knocking on doors of voters in New Hanover county until Nov. 8, when we lost.

“I feel like I wasted my time a little bit,” sophomore Lauren Iammatteo said. She’s a political science and sociology double major who worked on the Barnhill campaign. “I feel like what we do should make more of a difference than it does.”

She said that, generally, people just do not want to participate in politics. They do not want to listen to what we have to say when we knock on their door, and there is nothing we can do about that.

“Someone has to win and someone has to lose, but it sucks being on the losing side when you’ve sacrificed so much,” she said.

The time commitment alone was daunting. 15 hours per week is a little less than the time commitment of a part-time job, but when that time is spent in three-hour chunks walking through unfamiliar neighborhoods, or being screamed at over the phone by strangers who demand to be taken off the call list, it adds up fast. There were days when I went straight from class to canvass and then straight back to the library to work on homework until the wee hours of the morning. Iammatteo said she withdrew from a class to manage the workload.

All the work was worth it, though, because we really believed we would win and could help people in our district. Barnhill ran on the campaign promises of bringing back film incentives, opposing offshore drilling, and reinvesting money into the education system. We all believed in his positions, and it was inspiring to listen to people we canvassed who believed in them too.

“We led one of the best campaigns in the whole state,” she said. The whole experience was gratifying for her, and she said she will likely continue working on campaigns because it is important for the political process.

Senior history major Farris Smith has similar feelings. She had never worked on a campaign this extensively, and wants to pursue it further as she moves forward to law school.

“The first couple of days were heartbreaking,” Smith said. “In hindsight, it’s still exciting and I think you learn more from losing.”

We talked to each registered voter who identified as Democratic or Independent at least three times. We canvassed every precinct more than once. We talked to countless people, most of whom had decided to vote for Andrew by the time we finished our conversation. Smith doesn’t attribute our loss to our work or lack thereof, but rather on external factors like gerrymandering, opponent incumbency, and national Republican victories.

“I think we worked hard. There’s always more to do,” she said. “We spent a lot of our time and gave a lot of ourselves disseminating a message that’s important.”

Iammatteo feels the same way about the importance of our work, regardless of the loss. She feels that we brought attention to issues in North Carolina like film incentives and education.

“I felt like we did a really good job of conveying our message to voters,” she said.

“We tried to care about them as a campaign, and they can make a change.” Iammatteo continued, “We’re all relieved that the election is over and we can focus back in on school in time for exams. That’s not a luxury all of the campaign interns in our state have. Junior Clayton Hamerski is still working for the Roy Cooper campaign, which ran against incumbent Pat McCrory for the governor’s seat. Though Cooper was ahead by about 5,000 votes on election night and is still ahead by about the same margin, McCrory has said he won’t concede until all absentee and provisional ballots are counted.”

“I felt very robbed of something,” he said. Clayton was in Raleigh on election night and had a moment of celebration before the entire campaign realized the fight wasn’t over yet. They are still calling voters and talking to them about their absentee ballots.

The night of the election, the Barnhill campaign interns gathered at Buffalo Wild Wings to watch what we thought would be a victory. The state senate election was decided long before the national campaign and the gubernatorial election. Barnhill spoke to his supporters, assuring us that because we lost by such a wide margin, there was not much more we could have done.

“We were all crying a little bit,” Iammatteo said.

But Congressional candidates run again and again, their chances of winning against the incumbent growing each time they run. If Barnhill decides to run again in a few years, he stands a chance of turning over this district’s state senate seat. And if he needs volunteers for his potential future campaign, I for one will absolutely do the whole thing over again… maybe with a lighter course load.