Advising this week was quiet. I love advising because I'm close with the students in the group and with our advisor, but we're usually a lot more talkative. This past week, it was clear that everyone was still reconciling with what happened at the US Capitol just over a week ago. It's something that we couldn't, as a group, just put behind us at our first advising meeting of the year; it was an elephant in the room, something that we all felt needed to be addressed. Obviously, this event should never just be tossed under the bridge but it's something that, at least for me personally, began to take even greater significance the more time passed. Truly, the afternoon the riots began to take place, I wasn't even thinking clearly. The weight and implications of the event didn't register to me until at least the next day after some thoughtful processing.
In advising, we began our discussion by talking about how the riots have become normalized in a way. This precisely explains why the news keeps repeating the line "this riot was not surprising." Considering how the president has rallied his supporters in the past, I agree with this statement. In fact, I keep coming back to the feeling of how blank my mind felt the night of the riots.
Yet there's one thing that our advisor said that really stuck with me after the meeting. That we've probably only been paying attention to the world for just the last four to five years. And that struck me. I'm 18. Before I was 13, I agree that I wasn't very aware of the world. It strikes me that I only started paying attention to the news in seventh or eighth grade, a time when I hadn't yet started developing critical thinking skills. It strikes me that when I was just beginning to pay attention to world news, several crises culminated simultaneously. It's weird to think that this is the only America that I've known, whereas older generations have had a point of reference to compare today to. That older generations have witnessed better, and through critical thinking, can realize more easily that this is not normal. I suppose this makes it even more important for our generation to study history, social studies, and philosophy so that even if we didn't experience better, we can at least also feel the implications of what's happened.
It's been a draining couple of months. The movement for racial justice, the election, the global pandemic, applying to college, and now an insurrection that threatens the freedom and democracy of our country, all within a year. But I'm still listening, learning, and trying to formulate my own opinions. Today, I believe the ability to evaluate what we're seeing, hearing, and being told, rather than just accepting everything as truth, is more important than ever.
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