We’ve re-defined what abnormal really means.
Jasmin Navarrete is an undergraduate student at UCI studying Psychological Sciences. She has lived in Santa Ana, California her entire life, is the oldest of three siblings, and is a first-generation college student. She is a big fan of baseball and enjoyed attending games prior to the pandemic. As part of her project, Jasmin reflected on major events that took place in January 2021.
“Four Wednesdays in January”
We all had great expectations about what 2021 was going to be like. The calendar change, but the world remained the same. With everything that 2020 had for us, we didn’t think 2021 would start off so chaotically.
January 6th started off as a protest and quickly divulged into chaos. A riot was planned and as the crowd grew more agitated, we witnessed the storming of our capitol. A domestic terrorism attack brought about by a group of White supremist who had the intention to hurt, and in some cases kill, dozens of political figures within the walls of the capitol that day. Among those who were targets for violence were US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Vice President Mike Pence. The act of violence seemed to be spurred on by the President at the time, who felt that the actions of the people would knock some sense into the government or scared them enough to keep him in power. A man who believed the election had been stolen by his rival led people to breach the capitol, which had not occurred since 1812 when the British Army marched into the Capitol building and burned it down to the ground.
Inauguration day. January 20th, 2021. The morning was started with President Trump doing what very few Presidents have done before, leaving the White House before inauguration and choosing not to hand over the presidency in an amiable exchange. That morning, we welcomed President #46, Joseph R. Biden. On top of that, we welcomed the first female Vice President of the United States of America: Kamala Harris. A memorable moment that will live in history as we witnessed the first female Vice President take office. This job had previously only been held by white men. She is a woman of color from Black and southeast Asian dissent. She broke the glass ceiling and sparked inspiration for young girls across the entire country. Twitter was flooded with images of parents with their young daughters of all ages and races observing as Kamala Harris was sworn in that morning. The sky became the limit for girls and women in the US when she took the oath to serve our country as VP.
Amidst a global pandemic where we’ve had chart topping numbers of people contracting and dying from COVID-19 just in the month prior, the world progresses in a fog. Part of us is still stuck in March of 2020, waiting for all of this to “blow over” so that we may return to our “normal, everyday lives.” That, however, probably won’t happen. It’s been well over a year since the world entered a lockdown and we have learned to embrace these strange happenings as just another event, as if they didn’t carry any significance for us down the line. The oddities are extensive, but we take them in as a part of everyday life. These are now just things that we take into account as everyday occurrences. It no longer shocks us. It’s become part of the new norm. We’ve re-defined what abnormal really means. All of these big things are happening in the world, but we’re learning to scroll right past them as if they were just another part of our feed and not the platform itself.