It's often assumed, especially with some of the stereotypes surrounding the Republican Party, that in politics a young person isn't seen as good for much except volunteering for campaigns every few years and acting as a semi-skilled unpaid worker in legislative internships found everywhere from sea to shining sea.

With the exception of the occasional twelve year-old that can recite the Gettysburg Address backwards and delivers a legal dissertation on the 10th Amendment at some partisan national conference somewhere, the average (abnormal) young person that can stop watching Jersey Shore long enough to grow interested in politics usually finds few meaningful ways to get noticed by the local adult establishment until at least after college graduation.

At first glance, young professionals in their 30s, known and respected community members in mid-life who have raised children and developed skills during their careers, and retired party elders who were already mingling locally before we had fifty states all seem to have massive advantages over some neophyte that suddenly stumbles into the scene from the nearest high school or university.

Activists in their late 20s and older have been around longer to make connections and learn the local do's and don'ts, have access to greater financial and travel resources, tend to be more deeply ingrained in respected community organizations, can bring much more campaign and convention experience to bear, and have much more in common with each other that with some newcomer that (in their eyes) probably might as well still be wearing braces.

Millenial tyros that try to get newly involved as individual participants often face a daunting environment, even when the local party members are welcoming and friendly.

Most activists and party members in your community, many of whom are probably old enough to at least be your parents, have little time to show you the ropes because they are at the prime of their political careers and usually in the midst of their own campaigns or minor power struggles.

It's quite possible that a bright-eyed newcomer will either be largely ignored or potentially taken advantage of as the established adults look for whatever pieces and pawns they can use to achieve their local political objectives du jour.

These are just a few of the complaints I have heard from dis-encouraged people my age or have myself experienced during the last seven years of grass-roots involvement.

Although we youngins seem to have less opportunities to attain significant local roles or to become leaders in our communities, the truth is that young people in fact actually have many highly unique opportunities to not just succeed but even excel as local activists.

When applied correctly, a young person's relative obscurity, low status, and blank slate can all be turned from disadvantages into advantages, transforming obstacles into moments of exceeded expectations and attentive approval.

For example, when I was seventeen, I organized an internship for myself at the District Office of the 22nd Congressional District in Sugar Land. Although I was busy with high school and speech and debate, I recognized that I still had more free time in the afternoon and evenings than an adult that had to both work full-time and raise a family.

That led to Congressman DeLay's District Director passing my name on to the Junior Statesmen Foundation (JSF), which hosted a behind-the-scenes conference in New York City during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

I used the money I had saved up from delivering Chinese food to pay for the program and travel costs.

Although our RNC-sponsored JSF badges allowed us to get in and out of the tight police/Secret Service cordon, the large passes hanging from our neck were not high-level enough for us to actually enter the convention inside Madison Square Garden across from our lodgings in The New Yorker.

We were told that, unless we personally had relatives or very close friends who were delegates or high-ranking GOP officials, we would have to watch the speeches and halls of the 2004 RNC on TV just like everybody else.

Well, my family and I are first-generation immigrants and I was the only one interested in politics, so the personal connection angle was clearly out the window.

However, I refused to come all the way to New York and miss out on the GOP events just because I was too young and too un-connected to be of any notice. I designed a plan that played to my strengths.

Every morning I got up at 5 A.M., got dressed in my high school letter jacket (studded with about 40 various GOP campaign buttons) and cowboy hat, and took a cab to the opposite side of Manhattan to the New York Hilton where I had learned the Texas Republican Delegation was staying.

Every day I would sneak to the top floor and bluff my way in to the luxury buffet, stealing the first open seat I saw and waiting until I could strike up a conversation with the delegates next to me.

After I mentioned who I was and where I was from, I would try to mention that I would OH SO love to be able to attend the Convention myself and IF ONLY someone had a spare guest pass for the day they weren't using.

Every day I was able to secure some sort of guest pass and participate in the whole convention, except for the very last one where President Bush was the keynote speaker.

With all the guest passes already dried up in the morning, I spent a good hour and a half outside the convention hall before the evening events started, holding up homemade signs begging for guest passes while evading the Secret Service people that kept nervously chasing me off as a potential teenage anarchist/party-crasher.

I eventually got my pass from an elderly woman who was delighted to see a young person interested in the Republican Party.

The point of this story isn't to brag or to imply that you have to be in the Big Apple to find opportunities.

Chances like this are all around you as a young person, if you're willing to get creative. Recently someone I knew was hosting Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison for a private reception at his home with a number of pastors from around Houston and Texas.

Obviously attendance was extremely limited and a layperson could not be invited. How, then, does a young activist get in to such an event to hear a sitting U.S. Senator speak and field questions from just a few feet away? Dust off that old high school restaurant apron!

I spent hours rushing frantically from room to room as one of the two official waiters, re-filling ice tea and ice water, collecting plates, and helping with the set-up/clean-up.

Although this might not strike some people as the most glamorous entry into politics, or especially appealing to someone who has already worked hard to earn a college degree, but I see these kinds of moments as unique possibilities that are off-limits to activists in older age demographics.

Of course, strategically wearing ties that signify your links to the star speaker's alma mater never hurts either.

I also want to make it clear that your worth as a young person in politics is not just limited to manual labor either.

Believe it or not, you can leverage your generation's general apathy and lack of political participation in order to serve as a sort of liaison, a "youth representative" whose concerns and opinions are sought after by other factions in the local party apparatus (hey, credit card companies already know how important we are!)

When I was a senior at UT, I started my political blog for young Texans over at Red Hot Texans. That eventually led to me writing this online column for Ultimate Fort Bend, and that led me receiving an invitation from the West Fort Bend County Republican Women's Club to serve on a media panel during a huge February candidate panel as a representative of the Houston Chronicle.

At twenty-three years-old, I got the chance to grill local Fort Bend candidates running for positions as important as judge and district attorney. Not only that, but the freedom of the platform and my "angle" as a concerned young person gave me the ability to try to ask some of the direct kind of questions you so rarely see on TV or in magazines.

Of course, all of this is just what you can do as a single young person operating independently. If you work together as a unit with other friends and family your own age, you can achieve even more to try to have a say in your community and to make sure the needs of your generation are heard and addressed.

In this column I've written before about the explosive growth of the Fort Bend County Young Republicans within the last half-year. In the limited snapshot below you can see just a few of the candidates for public office and GOP elected positions that attended our early February meeting in Sugar Land.

Any time is a good time to start your community involvement and your life in Fort Bend politics. At the meeting in the picture, the FBYRs announced candidates running for the organization's officer positions.

One of our newer members, who was not a part of the organization when we started it in August/September, had been really involved in his new precinct and decided he wanted to dedicate more time to the Young Republicans.

He threw his hat into the ring for the position of Chairman of the group, after which our prior leader Armando Lopez informed everybody that he would actually like to step down since he had the heavy responsibility of raising a young child and working full-time.

Travis had only been a part of the "scene" a few months and, with a little drive, was suddenly about to step into leadership position in one of Fort Bend's most active grass-root groups.

It all just goes to show that hard work and initiative, and not age, determine how much of a say you have in local politics and how active you can be in your county!

As always, for more commentary and different kinds of articles, please visit my Texas political blog at redhottexans.com!