Ten things I learned in 2020 that I didn’t want to know and hope to soon forget
We’ve reached the end of the year and it’s time to reflect on the things we’ve learned. This year, most things I learned I hope to forget completely, but I probably won't. Here are my top ten!
Comment below (or somewhere) and let me know what you learned that you didn’t want to!
1. Only the host of a Zoom meeting can mute everyone. Is this true? I actually still don’t know for sure. I will not look this up.
2. How to make curry, sort of. I do not like to cook and I do not know how to cook, but when restaurants in NYC shut down, I, like everyone else, decided to recreate the dishes I know and love from nearby takeout locations. I hope you like vaguely spicy sludge, because that is my new specialty!
3. Live-streaming is stressful. Back when I did comedy on stages in rooms with living humans in them, I never once thought, “You know what I should do? Perform this same thing but alone in my kitchen with zero audience and a lot more worrying about my internet connection.” Now these opportunities are the highlights of my life.
4. I am capable of eating an entire wheel of vegan cheese in one sitting and I won’t even feel bad after. To be honest, I always suspected this was the case, but I never had the gall to test it until this year, which I have now done multiple times, and I am totally fine.*
5. News outlets will make vital coverage of a disease that’s killing everyone available even without a subscription. I never want to have free access to otherwise subscription-only content again.
6. Psychiatric medication is a miracle. JK I already knew that, but before the pandemic I did take myself off Prozac without consulting my doctor because I was sure I was almost better, and then had to come crawling back to her after I’d spent 600 days alone in my apartment and realized I wasn’t.
8. I am capable of being excited about dryer balls. This $12 purchase I was tricked into on the internet was easily one of the most exciting personal developments of the year for me.
9. Teaching online is way worse than teaching in person. I was one of the people who before 2020 was super excited about online learning and democratizing higher education until I actually had to do it and realized that it’s a much worse way to teach people things even if you try really, really hard.
10. If you are awake every single night from 3-5a it doesn’t really even matter. I used to always want to be in a sleep study where they detach you from time and see what your real circadian rhythm is. I’m pleased to report I’ve now gone through nearly a year of one and the results are in! My circadian rhythm is f*cked.
Well, that’s it folks! What an educational year it’s been. I hope by the end of next year I will not have thought about any of this sh*t even once.
* I am not fine, but it’s not related to the cheese (directly).
Fig. 1. Good riddance to all of this.
