Ah hell man, now is the best time to come over. Get a whiff of the crazy up close and personal. Watch the world's oldest democracy wake up and realize that there are consequences of ignoring, then pissing off a giant demographic of voters. The people are cool; the government is a bit off kilter now. But still worth the visit. Unlike some of us poor shlubs, you can always go home when things go tits up.That said… student exchange to USA suddenly lost a lot of its appeal.
Man, people here are taking this better than me. I really respect it and wish I didn't harbor so much ill will, but I'm to the point where anyone in my life who voted Trump is no longer in my life. I just can't reconcile voting against peoples rights with being someone I can relate to. I feel like I'm a notably worse person than I was a year ago. I feel drained and bitter and hopeless.The people are cool
I hear you loud and clear. It's very strange how much of a bubble I occupy. Pretty much everyone I interact with on a day-to-day basis is at the very least a Trump hater, and most are ardent Clinton supporters. But I live in a city and all my friends and family have at least one college degree. My daily reading includes the Times and Post and Hubski, and my daily listenings are NPR and podcasts about government. I'm a liberal guy, but not liberal enough to never consider a republican. However, it's anathema to that lifestyle to even consider Trump as a viable alternative. We didn't vote on liberal v conservative, or have v have-not, or rural v urban. We simply voted on whether we think all people are created equal. It's hard to swallow that pill. I have a number of uncles who are Trump supporters to their core. They're not poor. They're not left behind. And they aren't from rural areas. They're just rich, racist, white dudes who think that their place on the top of the hill is given by divine rights. The worst part about today is that I don't feel as shitty as I did yesterday. That's a normal part of grieving, but it also means that I'm normalizing. I don't want to normalize. I want to hate Trump and Attorney General Giuliani, and Secretary of State Gingrich, and Chief of Staff Christie, and whatever antiscience fuckwit heads the EPA. I feel like I don't live in that country.
Yeah. My girl friend is already trying to build bridges, she feels liberal elitism is part of what lead us here and wants to make things better. I love her, she's a better person than me. I'm torching bridges, I'm severing ties with family because at this point all I see is in them is rotten souls. I'm bitter and angry and I want this country to have the worst 4 years in a century. I'm going to continue to do whatever I can for for minorities, for those less privileged than me. I'm going to continue to donate and volunteer and become more political than before. But at this point everyone who voted for Trump is my enemy. I don't like feeling like this but I can't see it changing any time soon. This was a turning point for this country and I don't feel like there's any coming back.
The election shouldn't matter much in your decision. Things dont generally change all that quickly nationally to really have an effect. The finance and academic portion that you should really do your research on though. Many public universities in the US are run like businesses with the goal of providing minimal services for as much money as possible and enriching the administrators in charge. There are typically pretty hard limits on what they can charge in-state students so exchange and out of state students are their large profit centers. Because of that often the universities will not allow exchange students to take any of the core classes (unless there are free spots and there almost never are because the good classes are at capacity). Some universities actually keep their foreign exchange students in a satellite campus where they only interact with other exchange students and are taught the bare minimum is some sort of BS level classes. Of-couse they will change you whatever rate the market can bare so prepare to pay some ridiculous amount of money and get very little in return.