I know everyone and their mother is going to be writing about the election, but I want to throw my thoughts into the mix too because I feel like everyone's voices should be heard. Opinions on the election are totally appropriate, seeing as this is the first election I was allowed to vote in, and seeing as I am a human being and have opinions and emotions.

First of all, I'm glad it's over. I spent so much time blacklisting words and phrases that I was tired of having to read. "Trump," "Hillary," "Election" and "Politics" all made the cut, and I was happy to scroll through my feed without seeing those words. I was tired of the hate, tired of the anger, and tired of reading things about an election that made me sick to my stomach. What was I going to do in a world like this one, with either of the leaders? I had to weed through conspiracy theories, angry rants and slanderous campaign messages to even get an inkling of who I was going to vote for. I watched videos comparing the candidates tax plans, their health care reform projects, how the primaries worked, and everything else so that I could make an educated decision on who I was going to vote for.

And yet I woke up on the morning of the election, checked my phone, and took a deep breath before deciding this was going to be the most productive day of my life.

Because if I had to handle a president who didn't respect women, I was going to work my hardest to learn out of pure spite.

I'm not going to do what some people do and freak out about people who voted for Trump. For me, it came down to a few things: I didn't agree with his tax plan, I didn't like the things he said about women and the slurs he used, and I didn't want that man to be my boss. I like to think about it like that: would I want this man to be my boss? What about Hillary, would I want her to be my boss? As our nation's leader, that's what it comes down to, being the boss of the company, being the CEO. There's a Board of Directors, which is the House and Senate, but the leader is the head of the "company" that is the United States. And for me, personally, I know I wouldn't be comfortable with Trump as my leader.

And I'm still not. Especially as a woman about to go into the work force in the next few years, these four years of presidency are crucial to me. I don't know what the economy or job market is going to look like. Trump's proposed tax plan, from the reading and videos and commentary and the general match, don't add up the way I'd like. What if in two years, I graduate college and there isn't a job for me? What if the economy crashes so badly that my skills in college don't mean as much as the job experience I've gained, so my writing doesn't matter, and I'm stuck in retail?

All genuine fears. And for me, a generally not-fearful person, it's something that I end up struggling with. I wasn't going to be afraid under Hillary's rule; I knew what to expect with her. With Trump, I feel like I'm just waiting for a bomb to go off. I don't know what to expect.

Fear of the unknown is a perfectly logical fear.

As a white heterosexual, I know I have less to worry about. As a young woman, I'm more afraid for my future. For my friends who are of a different sexual orientation than I am, for my friends who are from other countries, I have a greater fear for them, because I know they're struggling even more than I am. They're afraid — not of the unknown, but for what they've heard and what they know could be coming.

We don't know what else to do. The college campus was very quiet all of the day after the election. People were in shock. I spent a half hour with one of my professors talking in her office, getting out all of my feelings on what had just happened. It was the topic of very serious discussion in all of my classes. Girls were crying. They had put a lot of hope in Hillary. Having their hopes crushed was something difficult for them to handle, and it still is, a week later.

I'm not going to go around telling people what to think, but I will say I was shocked by this election. It left me with a sense of heaviness on my shoulders, and did nothing to help my stress. I worry about my future. I'm sad that so many people are terrified of their futures too, and I know many of them have it much harder than me. And as young woman thinking about what she's going to do, I have to put up with a boss who scares me to pieces, but one who also makes me want to succeed. If Hillary made me want to go out and achieve greatness as an inspiration to powerful women, Trump makes me want to do the same, but just to show that I'm as strong as any other woman out there.

This election was important to me because I don't know what I'm going to do now. I thought I had a general idea of what I was getting myself into. But now, who knows where those plans will go. I have four years to figure it out, I guess.