The world seems kind of scary right now. In the past year, there have been a number of surprising and upsetting events including the election of a highly disputed POTUS, the escalation of global climate change, the growth and consolidation of a fascist white supremacist movement, death, fires and more. It would be easy to take these scary things too seriously, but the important thing to remember is that everything is fine.

Seriously, everything is OKAY. Sure, so far this year, 275 Americans have been killed in some form of police interaction, but everything is fine. On one hand, the United States contains only 5 percent of the world’s total population, but 25 percent of its prison population. On the other hand, everything’s fine and will be okay!

I mean, hate crimes in the U.S. were increasing before President Donald Trump. I’ll even admit that it’s not swell that hate crimes have been committed in his name (and that he and his staff have been leading by example). But I promise, if you stop and think about how okay everything is, it won’t seem like a big deal.

Consider our beautiful state, where only last year climate change brought devastating flooding and where only three of the seven transgender murders so far this year have occurred. Everything is okidoke here and really just fine. Though Louisiana residents have seen a nine percent decrease in uninsured individuals under the Affordable Care Act, the Republican health care plan will likely reverse that or potentially cost Louisianians thousands of dollars! So really, nothing to worry about!

Even on campus, everything is swell. You have the typical college party culture which puts students at risk of sexual assault or worse. There is also the poor state of mental health, compounded by a lack of on-campus resources and, in the near future, a lack of insurance to seek off-campus resources. This doesn’t even take into consideration Tulane’s race problem.

I mean, you really know things are going great when you can walk through a progressive, classy campus like Tulane’s and have anti-gay slurs thrown at you. So yeah, hands down, straight up, it’s all good! It’s great! We’re all safe, and nothing terrible is happening.  I am not on fire.