In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I came home from a walk with my roommate, Norma. We typically share in-depth conversations surrounding our experiences navigating young adulthood, but that afternoon we were both particularly ✨going through it✨

In future textbooks, the chapter on 2020 will be saturated with photos of protests, fists and posters thrust in the air as Americans, angry with repeated systemic injustice, railed against the police institution in order to seek action against the brutal deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.

Pages will feature photos of empty streets, people with their faces shrouded by masks, and the exhausted health care work force. The fear of illness was rampant and at times, irrational, as new information came out everyday, only to be contested and later found to be false.

These were the circumstances surrounding the conversations in 2020, but I am very grateful for Norma, whose intelligence and passion always inspires. Here is a snippet of her story.

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