They say in vet school you don’t learn to keep you head above water, you just grow gills. Looking back, that accurately describes some stretches during the first semester of vet school. For one week in particular, the water I was treading felt a little deeper and murkier, and my limbs felt heavy. Granted, finals week was pretty awful, but worse? Election week. Never has there been a heartier stew of political stress, culminating after months of unprecedented antics and tension, mixed with nearly uninterrupted study for what I still hold to be two of the hardest exams we had all semester; the week itself was a true test.

Most people who know me know that I was not a casual follower of this election. I had two different live-stream vote counting websites open alongside my course pack. Multitasking–studying for two minutes then glancing up–was going okay…at first. As the night went on, studying for two minutes became studying for one, eventually ceasing completely. No fewer than seven friends called me throughout the night, all in differing states of heightened emotion. And on top of all of this, a relative was having a bad week with his depression, and I was still trying to make sense of some biological black magic called VDJ recombination.

Gleaned from the obstacles of this week, I’ve decided to move forward with is this idea: no matter your feelings about the election results, there always have been and always will be external stressors with which to wrangle. We just must first give ourselves space to be human, then find a way through them. Election week, and others that have come before and since, have taught me that whatever worry I’m having will probably not be as big of a deal as it seems at the time, and will often be greatly diminished by a little perspective. This challenging week was also a reminder of something we driven students have heard before, but not often enough. We are good enough and we are, in fact, human. We need to give ourselves breaks when we need them, not just when it’s convenient. No grade is worth mental anguish or exhaustion. And we will persevere, just like we always have, becoming more gracious and buoyant human beings for the rough waters we’ve endured.