Tuesday night – election night – members of our staff sat patiently on the edges of our couches as electoral votes came in. Like so many other students, all we wanted to do Nov. 3 was drive to our best friend’s house, give them a hug and hope everything would be OK. 

Then we remembered we couldn’t. We’re in the midst of a pandemic. 

We stress-ate heaps of snacks, trying to focus for a moment on the fate of our country’s democracy and whether our existential identities would fit with the candidate chosen. 

Then we remembered we had virtual class the next day and had a gargantuan pile of homework sitting on our coffee table, due the very next morning. 

It’s sad remembering times when we actually felt physically healthy; when we weren’t isolated from friends and loved ones; when we weren’t scared for our country; when we were truly passionate about the articles we wrote. Now it’s as if the assignments we’re submitting are for mere completion points. Although some of us once prided ourselves on being acknowledged in the Provost’s List, we now hope to just graduate with C-letter grades. We’ve realized seeing our names on a list are nothing more than meaningless specks in the realm of a universe that makes little sense anymore. We’re just … tired.

This week was insanely stressful for many Chapman students. We’re not eating, not sleeping, not socializing and our motivation, our work ethic and our mental state plummeted. We were too busy endlessly refreshing our news feeds and hoping that CNN’s seemingly nocturnal John King would tell us everything is OK. 

Five days of hell passed by. Many of us hit our breaking point. Some of us took a break by laying on the floor of our bathrooms for 30 minutes, no longer having the mental strength to keep pushing. Others set 15-minute timers to take a nap that would ultimately turn into a self-deprecating nightmare about the future of our careers. We took a breath, for the first time in what felt like forever, when the election results were finally announced Nov. 7.

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were confirmed as our next leaders. 

But as the dust settled on our momentary election, we realized something: we’re still exhausted. All the fatigue gained over the past few days couldn’t be offset by a momentary injection of exhilaration. 

The election isn’t nearly the only boulder weighing down our backs; as always, cases of the coronavirus keep getting worse. We’re now up to an average of over 106,000 daily cases. No vaccine is in sight. Limited internships are opening for the spring and summer and because they’re remote and everyone is vying for experience, competition will rise. But we don’t have the capacity to even apply for an external job when our professors are smacking us over the head with five projects and three exams. Our mental stability feels like a wagon rolling down a hill, impossible to catch up with.

To make matters worse, we can’t turn off our phones, content with Biden. Female, LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC students at Chapman have to bear the worry that alt-right extremist groups like Patriot Front might erupt in violent aggravation over the election results. And for all of us, Trump has decided to throw the entirety of his legal team at a completely baseless accusation of voter fraud. We know we’re going to have to spend the next two months – at a minimum – reading daily headlines on Trump’s refusal to just get the hell out of office and concede the race like a “big boy.” 

Our staff knows we’re going to have to cover it every step of the way, because that’s our job. Even though we’re spent from giving a platform to a giant baby who refuses to accept a fair loss, we’ll continue to cover the public, legal meltdown of the Trump administration’s remaining time in office.

So until Trump is out and Biden is in, we’re going to be stuck sitting at our desks on three hours of sleep, a half-eaten granola bar for dinner in hand, frantically trying to finish typing a Canvas discussion board post while the integrity of our democracy burns all around us. We feel like we’re living through the “This is fine” meme, except we are most certainly not fine.

We’re so tired.