I won the lottery.

Unfortunately, not in the monetary sense. I will still be crushed by student loans until I’m at least 30. I won the Hofstra debate lottery, which means I got to see the first presidential debate of 2016 live and in person.

I breathed the same air as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I was a part of the history that as a social studies education major, I will have to teach someday. It’s the kind of thing that happens once in a lifetime, if that.

But allow me to back up. When I first entered the debate hall, I was fairly stunned. The arena I was in just a few weeks ago for new student orientation had been transformed. Navy cloth was draped everywhere, and banners and American flags decked the walls. The stage was fairly unassuming. There were no fireworks or glitter. Nothing was made of solid gold or diamonds. It looked official, of course, but nothing that would clue an outsider into the fact that in just an hour, an estimated 90 million people would have their eyes on that stage, whether it be in person or at home.

I got a floor seat, which I still have mixed feelings about. I was physically very close to the stage, but I was off to the extreme side to the point where the massive cameras blocked one of the podiums. There were monitors, of course, so what I couldn’t see directly in front of me I would be able to catch on the screen. (It is worth mentioning that the podium that was blocked turned out to be Trump’s). But that hardly dampened my mood. I was watching the likes of Chris Christie and Mark Cuban walk down the aisles beside me to their seats. I couldn’t feel cheated in any sense of the word.

We were informed by moderator Lester Holt that there would be no clapping or audible reactions of any kind during the debate. For those of you who watched, this obviously did not happen. Interestingly enough however, it was not the students who violated the rule, at least not from where I was sitting. It seemed that the older attendees broke the ranks far more readily than we students did. But take from that what you will.

When Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump entered the stage, once again, nothing dramatic happened. A chill did not run through the room or anything. Or maybe it did. The debate hall was set at 60 degrees, so a lot of chills were running through the room.

Everyone stood to applaud the candidates, and I watched them shake each other’s hands, and then Lester Holt’s. And the first thing that struck me was that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were actual people. They are not larger than life, towering over me on a television screen. They were people with families and pasts and presents and futures, and somehow their paths crossed with mine and they were right there in front of me.

And I think that’s what people forget during the election, and through the political process in general. These people are human beings. They’re not caricatures on your TV or computer screen. They are real, breathing, flawed, thinking creatures. And stepping back, even I’m not sure what to do with this realization. How am I supposed to vote for someone when I’ve seen them at their worst?

Neither candidate will make the perfect president. It’s impossible. They’ll make mistakes, and do something unforgivable in the opposing party’s eyes. That’s simply how politics go. And we can’t expect everything to go right. There’s always some factor we’re not taking into account in any given problem. So this election, we’re not looking for a president that can solve every problem ever; There’s the economy, foreign policy and foreign wars, taxes, race relations. Everything can’t be tied up in a neat bow in just four years. We’re simply looking for someone competent enough to to handle any pressing situations that may arise during their term. We want someone that will make the right kind of mistakes, the kind that can be fixed. If we go into this election expecting every move to be perfect, then we’ve already set ourselves up for failure. Humans are imperfect. The sooner we can accept that, the sooner we can forgive, forget, and get some real work done.

So when I saw Clinton and Trump walk onto the debate stage that night, I did not see the future of America resting squarely on either of their shoulders. I will hold the next president to high standards, of course. We cannot accept anything less than their best efforts, but I’m holding the American people as a whole to higher standards. At the end of the day, the president is only the face of the country. We are the heart of it.

That’s a lot of conclusions to come to in the span of a 90-minute debate. But that was my thought process through its entirety. And I can honestly say it was one of the best nights of my life. My only regret is that I didn’t get a selfie with Mark Cuban.