What Does Lakeside Think About The New Year?

We’ve recently rung in the new year, showering ourselves with confetti, resolutions, and new beginnings for 2024. As we’re making goals and mood boards for our new year, a question pops into our minds: is 2024 going to be a good year? Before we dive deeper into this question, let’s do a quick recap of 2023.

In 2023, the fighting never seemed to stop. We sat on the edges of our seats as we watched fighting unfold in Gaza and Sudan, and continue on in Ukraine, with seemingly no end in sight. This past year was an alarming global warming wake-up call, going down as the hottest year ever. There were around 350 school shootings in 2023, wounding 191 people and killing 57. Before 2018, school shootings never went above 60 per year, but now they’re so common that there’s almost one school shooting a day. They’ve even affected Ingraham High School, just a few blocks away, which forced us into lockdown. 

But we’ve got to mention the highs of the past year as well: 2023 had the “summer of strikes,” with almost 400 strikes happening involving half a million people across all different industries, such as actors, auto workers, writers, healthcare workers, and Starbucks baristas. Together, they got a 7% average wage increase in just 2023’s first quarter, showing major successes. This past year was the year of women in pop culture with Taylor Swift and Beyonce’s tours lifting the U.S. economy, the Barbie movie grossing more than $1.4 billion and breaking countless box-office records, Michelle Yeoh becoming the first Asian woman to win a Best Actress Oscar, and Rihanna’s Super Bowl Halftime Show becoming the most watched ever to that point. The government finally declared an end to the COVID-19 pandemic, and healthcare entered a new era, with many breakthroughs in possible vaccines and cures for Alzheimer's, dementia, sickle cell disease, malaria, and cancer.

Now that we’re up to date on 2023, how is Lakeside feeling about the new year? A survey was sent out to Lakesiders about this question, and here are the results from 85 replies: 56.4% of Lakesiders were either optimistic or very optimistic about the new year, 31.8% had mixed feelings, 10.6% felt pessimistic, and only 1.2% or one person feeling very pessimistic. Overall, the results displayed a surprising and refreshing wave of optimism, which is a very positive way to start the new year! Many people showed mixed feelings, which makes sense, as years have great moments and horrible moments. Additionally, the survey asked if 2024 will be better than 2023. 49.4% said yes, 23.4% said maybe or unsure, 4.8% said it’s going to be about the same, and 22.4% said it won’t. Again, the results display a trend of optimism about the new year, which is very great to see.

If anything, 2024 needs to be a better year than 2023. Even though we can’t predict what’s going to happen, humanity in general needs a win. We need to take all the good that happened this year - better work environments, medical advances, female empowerment, pop culture, etc. - and take it into the new year, leaving behind the violence and scary events of 2023. All the good things that happened are a result of coming together, supporting each other, and collectively working towards something, and we ought to bring that community spirit with us into 2024. Violence tears us apart, whether it’s actual violence or fighting about how to deal with violence. We’ve got to leave that behind. The new year's resolution we all need to make is to be united, lift people up, and support each other if we want to make 2024 a great year.