I remember that Tuesday very well. It was one of those very long days with four classes that went on four about seven hours straight. I voted for Johnson between my French class and my art class, and I had set the Skype chat picture to a “Please FUCKING vote” mock button.

My classes were exhausting but I remember feeling like this entire cavalcade of the utter worst this country’s political class had to offer was about to end, and end spectacularly. Either the Trumpists would win and the Clintonites would have a breakdown, or the Clintonites would win and the Trumpists would have a breakdown. Either way, I was expecting havoc.

I took a nap from around three thirty to about six, to eat dinner and then to Quizbowl and then to the ballroom. Quizbowl I don’t remember much, but the ballroom practice I very much do. None of us wanted to talk about the election, but we all knew something big was coming.

If one has seen the film Downfall, or Der Untergang, the one about Hitler’s last days in the bunker that has been transformed into a breeding ground for parodies, one may be reminded of a certain scene. This scene has the lower ranking staffers of the Fuhrerbunker attempting to enjoy themselves as they wait for certain doom, going so far as to ask that swing music be played.

As they dance and make merry, a Soviet artillery shell slams into the building, covering them in soot and smoke. That’s what that ballroom practice made me think of; as we danced, we were bracing for something to hit us and hit us hard.

Being the awkward soul I am I was too afraid to ask people to dance with me all the time, and so I would spend my time on my phone reading the election thread on a forum I frequent. They were turning to panic; the mostly liberal site was slowly realizing that they were losing. It seemed to be all over for them as Ohio went red.

We left the basement fencing room we used to dance in and returned to the main dining hall where we watched the news come in, that the billionaire and former reality show host was becoming our president, whether we liked it or not. They were all worried, and my Facebook feed was full of angry people whose messiah had failed to come.

It felt surreal, like something out of a movie. Politics had been broken and it had been broken right before my eyes. As I walked back to my dormitory I heard the chants of “LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!” and of people gathering in the Sunken Garden in a form of solidarity for those, mostly minority students, afraid of what would come next.

I stayed up until four in the morning, reading the news, partly worrying about what the future held. On the one hand, I was not looking forward to a Trump administration. I had broken ranks with the Republicans, and at that moment no longer considered myself one of them. I found the rising tide of nativism to be quite distasteful as a second-generation immigrant, and could no longer in good conscience be a member of that party. That's why I had voted for Johnson that day.

On the other hand, I had been awaiting the reckoning of the Democratic Party for years at that point and seeing their confusion struck me as a vindication of my prognostications. That being said, looking back perhaps it was inappropriate, with the fear of what this new administration might do being a palpable one.

When I woke up, it was the eeriest silence I had ever heard. On the normally bustling sunken garden, which is often busy even that early in the morning, there was a morose lack of any noise

I heard somebody whistling Ding Dong the Witch is Dead as I left the building, and my French professor was rather flummoxed about the whole thing. He said that politics was no better in France if we were curious.

At the end of class, I asked him how to say “God help us all” in that language.