Only three-quarters of the way through his college career, John Parker Ford landed a job as the director of collegiate relations with Cain’s Solutions and put his college education on hold in order to participate in national politics.

Ford spent the past 11 months helping former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s campaign for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

As a college student, Ford said he was amazed to be offered the job after working for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal in 2007 and 2011.

“I wouldn’t have even thought for applying for this job by myself,” he said.

Ford took the job even though he had to put off his college career and move to Atlanta. He felt working for a high-profile national candidate would be more beneficial than keeping school as his first priority.

“It would have been almost stupid to not take this job, especially since I’m working even before I’ve graduated,” Ford said.

He said his interest in politics began during his freshman year in 2008 when the election dominated the news cycle.

Ford was just beginning to pay attention to news on his own then, after leaving his parents’ house where politics were not a topic of conversation.

His parents are both conservatives, and while Ford said that was the jumping-off point for his own views, he continues to develop his personal politics through reading the newspaper and keeping up with current policy.

College, his reading and the people he has met have shaped Ford’s now more moderate viewpoint, but he still supports conservative ideals.

His favorite candidate in the presidential race was U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman Jr., who has been called a moderate conservative and has called for a third party to even out the U.S. political system.

While working for Cain’s campaign was not a dream of Ford’s, it helped him realize he doesn’t mind working the 14-hour days campaigning requires as long as he’s invested in something he loves.

Ford is enrolled in one online course right now and will return to the University for the spring semester.

From January until July, Ford arranged events, especially on college campuses, for Cain as he campaigned for Romney and other Republican candidates.

From July until last Friday, Ford’s job was arranging a 30-college tour in mostly swing states for a Cain initiative called “The College Truth Tour.”

Ford said he enjoyed having so much to do with a large campaign, and in an ideal world, he would combine his directorship with the College Truth Tour with the political message of the first seven months of his job.

“I loved parts of it, and I hated some parts, but I got addicted,” Ford said about working in the political world.

Ford said the events he worked on for the first half of his year focused on Republican solutions to national problems, and featured Cain giving a 45-minute speech with a question-and-answer session following.

The format of the College Truth Tour talks were similar, Ford said, but the content changed dramatically.

Instead of solutions, Cain spoke about nationwide problems.

“Instead of saying, ‘Hey, go vote,’ we were saying, ‘Hey, go vote, but make sure you’re informed,’” Ford said.

He took away two main points from the experience.

The crowd would get “turned off” when Cain began talking about social issues.

“You could see it in people’s faces,” Ford said.

The Republican Party “is losing a lot of support from young people and moderate older people — not because of stance, but because of the way we present the stance,” Ford said.

He said the other side of this was the liberal faction who came with signs supporting President Barack Obama and sometimes “never raised them because they agreed with Cain.”

Ford doesn’t think the College Truth Tour changed much on a larger scale, but said it had an impact for the scale on which they worked.

He estimated the tour reached about 15,000 students.

“It’s a small piece in a huge picture,” Ford said.

His follow-up job until election day was to make sure the events mobilized students to vote, and produced results in the form of more registered voters.

Ford also helped write one of Cain’s messages.

“Cain doesn’t have speeches, he more takes a couple, maybe six bullet points, and talks about those,” Ford said. “I was able to write the summary for his message once.”

Ford said in the future, he would like to work for something in the private sector relating to public relations, or work on a lower rung of the political ladder.

“I was able to do my job fine. I was competent, but I really should not have been in that high of a position so young,” Ford said.