The Years of My Twenties (Tier List)

An autobiography of technology, activism, and self-love.

Age 20 (May 2015 - May 2016)

I was young and the world was full of possibilities. My Junior year of college was exciting, with fulfilling friendships and little to worry about other than passing my next midterm. Little stands out about this time other than the internship I had in the summer, which started my chemical engineering career trajectory starting to take shape (and made it so that I had money in my pocket to spend on video games and chicken wings).

I’d been paying close attention to politics since the 2012 election, when I was taking AP US Government & Politics in high school. I had always leaned liberal, but by virtue of being raised while white in a white supremacist society, I had a lot to learn about the machinations of the world. For example, I still believed that our first Black president was a sign of our continuous upward trajectory towards progress (I had heard that Dr. King quote about the moral arc of the universe bending toward justice, but had not yet learned that this bending was something people had to actively participate in).

In the first major wave of the Black Lives Matter movement—the summer after Freddie Gray was killed by police in April 2015, mere months after Michael Brown was killed by police—some precursor to the Instagram social justice infographics we know today led me to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. I read the book while on vacation with family in Washington D.C., which ended up being the most impactful possible way to experience it. I was struck by the disparity between the mythology of American excellence on display at every museum, every park, every city block, and the darkness of our actual history, the gap between proclamations that we’re a country founded on capital-f Freedom and the experience of Black men right up until this day. How can one see such a gap and be struck with a sense of greater purpose?

A 2015 Slut Walk at UConn made things even more clear: things were changing. Attention was being brought to social issues at a magnitude not seen in decades, and thanks to the magic of the Internet, social media was going to make it easier than ever for positive, helpful messages to spread. Things were dark, but there was nowhere to go but up.

Rank: A-Tier

Age 21 (May 2016 - May 2017)

I was young and the world was full of possibilities. My friendships were as strong as ever, plus I could drink now, which added a whole new dimension of fun. The Summer of Pokémon Go was the last time the world knew peace, my most distinct memory of this year being wandering through my hometown, catching a Scyther, running into complete strangers who were also looking for the Scyther, leading them to where in the physical world it was, and watching as they caught it too. Technology still seemed like it could bring us together, still associated with these emergent moments of connection. Need I mention Vine, affordable EVs, viable solar panels, or VR headsets?

Obviously, that’s not the whole story. Most older people characterize “your 20s” as a time of fun and exploration, but I was barely two years into mine before having to deal with the rise of American fascism. That’s what the Instagram infographics were calling it anyway, at least on my “side” of the Internet (as it would come to be called). On the other side(s) of the Internet, the far right was beginning to capture the culture. I’ll leave it up to future historians to what degree this was the fault of Cambridge Analytica and the deliberate actions of elites to manipulate people into voting red that year, or to what degree they were simply taking advantage of the racism that was already there (the 2010 Tea Party movement had already allowed many right-wingers to gain political momentum on a platform of “literally whatever this Black guy in charge does, even if it’s theoretically good, we’ll stop him so that he doesn’t get credit for it”). Looking back, it definitely seems like technology was a major contributor to the Republican’s success; we elected a reality TV star and living meme as president, the logical outcome of a population more obsessed with frictionlessly guzzling content than engaging with the real, frictional world.

At the time, though, I didn’t see it that way. I still had that classic Millennial optimism within me. Born in 1995, I was at the cusp of Millennial and Gen Z, having clear recollection of VCRs and dial-up internet but nonetheless being versed in Snapchat and online lingo. As such, I’ve never quite taken the “Doomer” pill, always having hope for the future. Everyone around me found it self-evident that our new president was a terrible person and had already begun fighting back—#Resist-ing—in the ways that they could. At a January anti-Trump rally, inspired by the many speeches from faculty and student activists, I made a commitment to offer myself to The Movement, giving what little I could to make change happen. It probably helped that things were going great in my personal life, too; I had just gotten accepted into a PhD program and was about to enjoy the last full, free summer for the rest of my life. Things were dark, but there was nowhere to go but up.

Rank: S-Tier