Vanessa Kerry: helping out her dad.(Election 2004)

If you think you're busy with homework and after-school activities, be glad you don't have Vanessa Kerry's schedule

Senator John Kerry's youngest daughter has been working for the past year to help her dad get elected president.

Whatever the result after Election Day next month, Vanessa told us working for her dad's campaign has been an honor--and her choice. One year ago she decided to join the campaign and her dad had "a mini-freak-out" at first. After all, Vanessa was in her third year of medical school at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Like most parents, her dad didn't want her to leave school.

In the end, she said, he was fine with her decision to take some time off, because she told him she would definitely still graduate from medical school--just a year later. But she isn't out of school entirely.

In the hottest final weeks of the campaign, Vanessa is starting something new. She was awarded the chance to study international health policy in London, England, as a Fulbright scholar. We caught up with Vanessa by phone from London two weeks ago, when she had just finished her first day at the University of London.