annoying color btw... lol.

1. There are other ways to remain busy, I find the repetitious job to not be as helpful. Besides, we have to move away from this mentality that education is everything. While I may be sort of guilty for pushing that idea to some respect, it is just not everything in life. The point is, to keep reading, keep learning. I have done monotonous jobs, its annoying as hell, once you can do it with your eyes close, i simply recall just spending the time I did the work just thinking about my situation and that certainly did not help. The point is, try to think of something a bit more constructive. If you can't go to college because of the cost, then teach yourself. Frankly, I feel like that is the case when you are in some courses in the university level. There is ocw.mit.edu , and other universities have similar systems, I believe stanford and harvard have something similar as well.

2. Try to make new friends that understand you better, they are out there, trust me. As I was in college I lost contact with all my high school friends as they started to get jobs and internships and doing all these cool things that I just could not do, as their outings took place in locations I could not go to. But, now I have a new set of friends, these ones know about my situation and a lot share the same status, we end up working together trying to find ways to get ahead. It keeps us busy, doing something rather than nothing.

3. I have a hobby as well... I collect coins, you really cannot do much with that hobby either, lol. As far as my drawing skills, I would be lucky to draw a straight line, the point is, the hobby is to keep you busy some times, to have you think of something else when you have absolutely nothing else to do.

4. You have gone much further than I have. I feel like I keep my parents far away from everything I do, its easy for me, I am in a school that is located in a different state and I get far more stressed when I go back home, so I understand it. But it was rather an idea when you feel like you just have to tell someone something but are not willing to tell anyone else.
My frustrations are exacerbated by the fact that my parents are now Permanent Residents and my sister a US Citizen, and as by magic, the completely forgot what it was like to be undocumented, its unbelievable the kinds of mistakes and assumptions that they make, thus I had to seek other people to talk to.

6. I get you, I was in that situation a couple years ago, extremely lethargic to the point that I could barely function, its not pretty.

I don't think I can give a one size fits all solution, but I can say what worked for me. I sought other people in the same situation who are doing something about it, and I started to get involved. I took what I observed through my experience and I made it my goal to try and do something about it, and make the change that I believe needs to happen. I looked at a letter that I had sent still less than a year ago, which followed the first time I told anyone about my status, and in that time have planned well over a dozen events, given presentations to hundreds of people, talked to various professionals in various fields, and have been involved in one way or another to the explosion in new students that are undocumented at my school, created organizations and advocated for resources, talked to CEO's that would try to find a way to get away from me but couldn't because no one would approach them, and talked to people that seriously do not get it. Very little surprises me now in how people respond to what I tell them, but perhaps the most recent surprise I got was when I spoke to high schools from a predominantly black school who are not undocumented, and how fast they got it, how fast they understood what I talked to them about. I have talked to some pretty powerful people who just didn't get it, even people that consider themselves allies, and I gotta say, my hope in youth was enforced then.

I have also talked to other high school students in other schools that are in areas that are much worse towards immigrants and who are undocumented, and I saw a lot of people not only getting into college, but also having the support of private individuals that where paying their way through college, and that is something I did not observe when I was applying for college.

It may seem like things are getting worse and they are in some places, but the support is also increasing. The actions that are being taken against us are very unstable and dangerous and when exposed more likely to move this away from being a political issue to a human rights and civil rights issue.

Again, this is what worked for me, and it worked because I found such a group, I don't know that I would have observed the same result if I had not been fortunate to be where I am right now, but in the mean time, there is this group that is online and accessible to all that have an internet connection.