Has anyone ever asked you “Where were you when…?” Simply put, making a note of current events affecting the world is a compelling way to go about entertaining such topics. I believe some of the strongest contenders for a “This Moment in Time” capsule would contain information about the most recent 2020 election, the pandemic, and the stock market. I believe answering questions such as Will we ever obtain any form of normalcy? What makes this election so historic? What will come of the stock market and its traders after the Gamestop turmoil? Answering these questions will tell you why I believe them to be the highest marked moments of 2020.

COVID-19 has affected almost everyone on the planet in one way or another. With everyone locked in their houses, we are all asking, “When will we achieve some sort of normalcy?” Accordingly, Alvin Powell gains contact with Public Health Expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, for a one-on-one about the virus. “Let’s say we get 75 percent, 80 percent of the population vaccinated,” Fauci said. “If we do that, if we do it efficiently enough over the second quarter of 2021, by the time we get to the end of the summer, i.e., the third quarter, we may have enough herd immunity protecting our society that as we get to the end of 2021, we can approach very much some degree of normality that is close to where we were before.” (Powell). Dr. Fauci believes there is a way that we can get through this, and imagines that we can survey substantial results soon. It takes a great deal to ask this question, but even more to answer it. He lays out a plan to minimize the virus and gives a date as to when we can expect some type of normalcy. We won’t be forced to wear masks anymore or stay locked up in our houses. This pandemic speaks for itself when it comes to being placed in history.

Speaking of monumental moments, this most recent election will undoubtedly be in history books, one day. With the circumstances and pressure the candidates were under, and the struggles and mishaps the citizens were put through, voters will certainly remember the stress of weighing two uncertain futures. According to Bruce J. Schulman at Boston University, “Whatever the final tally and the long-term impact of 2020, the scale of the contest (a record popular vote exceeding 150 million), the crisis conditions under which Americans decided it, and the innovative ways they voted will make it a momentous episode in the story of American democracy.” (Schulman). In itself, this election has recorded some historical numbers. The popular vote has set a record, even with the circumstances of voting mishaps. The candidates themselves were both immensely influential and would’ve used the power in distinctly different ways. This one was anyone’s game. Moreover, I’ve chosen this year’s election considering how we dealt with this during a global pandemic. Nevertheless, we were intent on deciding who was going to help bring our nation back to prosperity. This was no normal election and will be looked upon for many years to come.

Meanwhile, wall street has been an extremely significant figure in the news, for some particularly odd reasons. With a sudden uproar in the Gamestop shares, everyone is wondering what’s to come. We want to know how it will affect us. Matt Philips and Taylor Lorenz meetup to tell us what the future may hold. One post he found on the Reddit page, Wall Street Bets, reads, “Rally the troops, my brothers, for the war could be over very soon,” a commenter who goes by Gardeeon wrote on Jan. 19. “You control the power, GME is not going to the moon, but to the edge of the [expletive] observable universe.” (Lorenz and Philips). They believe this will end well for the people and the authors of the article agree. There seem to be no restrictions that will be placed on the main aggressors of the market, so the Reddit users will continue trading. Conversely, a pastor in California, Justin Speak, regards it the same way, “There’s a catharsis to actually making money off their pain a little bit,” he said of his modest earnings from GameStop. His wife put it more bluntly: “Eat the rich.” (Lorenz and Philips). Traders are calling for the top to suffer, and it does not appear like they will take no for an answer. This event will be heavily looked back on in the future as a memorial landmark for 2020.

A “This Moment in Time” memento will help create moments you can look back upon. I have merely chosen the events I believe have affected the world the most in the pandemic, the 2020 election, and the wolves of wall street. While there are a plethora of impactful events happening in the world all at once, the stories I’ve picked were chosen because they include all of us. These are moments that we face together, making them that much more important. We can share our different experiences of the same events, or simply reminisce on our hard-earned memories. But, at the end of the day, we should live in the moment and enjoy the now, for after you experience an event, your memory could be the only grapple you have to it.

Works Cited

Phillips, Matt, and Taylor Lorenz. “'Dumb Money' Is on GameStop, and It's Beating Wall Street at Its Own Game.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Jan. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/business/gamestop-wall-street-bets.html. 

Powell, Alvin. “Anthony Fauci Offers a Timeline for Ending COVID-19 Pandemic.” Harvard Gazette, Harvard Gazette, 11 Dec. 2020, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/12/anthony-fauci-offers-a-timeline-for-ending-covid-19-pandemic/. 

Schulman, Bruce J. “Historic 2020 Election a ‘Momentous Episode American Democracy.’” Boston University, 4 Nov. 2020, www.bu.edu/articles/2020/historic-2020-presidential-election/.