It is three o'clock in the morning and everything is silent. Well, not entirely. Sam is telling Kristen about walking into his dorm room yesterday morning and having it smell of "butthole." I hear the soft hum of one lamp lighting the room where I'm attempting to stay awake. All I can think of is the fact that I am tired.

I am not merely physically tired. It is not even the workload or the social pressures and anxieties or the worries. It is living in a world that feels like everything is changing, and not for the better. For God's sake, I am a middle-class Chinese-American male blessed enough to attend college and not be in crushing debt, and I feel nearly powerless. Imagine how someone directly affected by the events of the past week might feel. By this, of course, I only mean Trump. Not the man, for the name has become more than the man itself; it has transformed into a form of thought that doesn't seem to hold any inkling of human empathy, just a desire for power and to be right. For some reason, a man who as recently as a year ago headed a far-right sensationalist propaganda blog now resides on the National Security Council, a woman who knows nothing about public schools or education policy is about to take over as Secretary of Education, and international students and people who have worked years for their green cards have been temporarily banned thanks to an executive order.

And yet I feel helpless. All my life I have been trained to believe that I need to act when moral wrongs have been committed against me and my friends, but everything seems to be happening so fast, executive actions taken, two by two, onto a new presidential ark that is slowly falling apart, and I am not ready for the storm that is to follow. How can I make a difference when I'm already drowning in schoolwork, let alone work to improve the lives of the kids in our public education? And if I feel this way, how do the people whose lives literally transform by these movements of a pen, working two or three jobs while being unsure and uncertain of how to live without healthcare or educational opportunity or told that they cannot enter the United States?

By God, do not let all of this get you down. Above all, realize your worth and how intentionally and wonderfully your whole self was made. Resistance to what is wrong at a certain level starts with existing. Work hard with what responsibilities you've been given, but don't let the news drive you into a dull despair. Figure out what you can with the resources you have. Donate your money or your time. Find a cause you can really support and join a group or start your own (jealous if you have that much time). Talk to people who feel differently than you do in an empathetic way and share a listening ear. Tired as we are, we are not helpless. Our very bodies stand as a counterpoint to people who would have us believe that some of us are worth less than others. They are wrong, and we will prove it.