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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Conn Coll chapter.

If you’re reading this, then you, like me, are suffering the fate of living through unprecedented times. Reading the headlines or scrolling on social media, it can feel like the world just won’t stop coming at you. To quote an iconic 2012 tweet by Horse ebooks: “Everything happens so much.” I feel those words in my soul lately.

Of course, what first comes to mind from this quote is the everything that is negative. I’m not denying that there’s quite a lot of despair and horrors these days. However, it’s important to remember that everything good happens so much too. We have to keep this in mind, or else we’ll spiral and be immobilized by hopelessness. In a world of misinformation, we can’t lose sight of reality. The truth is that joy still exists in the world in copious quantities. I will take this opportunity to remind you of a few positive everythings that will happen so much this year.

  • Yellowjackets Season 3

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been waiting a very long time for the next installment of this phenomenal TV show. Cannibalism, mysterious forces in the woods, the brutal trials of girlhood — what more can you ask for? I’m so sat. If you haven’t seen this show yet, you have a couple of weeks to catch up on the first two seasons before the big day. On February 14, the first two episodes of Season 3 of Yellowjackets will become available to Paramount+ subscribers, and two days later they will premiere on Showtime. As the trailer makes abundantly clear, it’s going to be freaking awesome.

  • Total lunar eclipse (blood moon)

The date “March 13” may still evoke a visceral response for you five years out. No matter what happens this time around, though, there is a guaranteed celestial event to look forward to. Late at night on March 13th into the wee hours of the morning on the 14th, there will be a total lunar eclipse visible across North America. The Earth’s obstruction of the sun’s light will create the famous “blood moon” effect, in which the full moon appears reddish-orange. Weather permitting, I will be up late admiring this moon and cursing my iPhone 12’s inability to take decent photos of it.

  • New Hunger Games book

I first read the Hunger Games trilogy in sixth grade and certainly enjoyed it at the time. However, in more recent years, I have reveled in the “Hunger Games Renaissance” as many people have come back with a more mature eye to unpack the rich political commentary that the series offers. I was a big-time enjoyer of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and this was only 30% due to what Coriolanus Snow looked like in the movie. The actual book, getting inside the head of someone experiencing his villain arc, was so fascinating to me. So naturally, as soon as I learned that Suzanne Collins was releasing another installment from the Hunger Games universe — this one set during the Second Quarter Quell, Haymitch’s games — I started counting down the days. It’s less than two months away now. March 18th will see me camping outside the bookstore.

  • New Lucy Dacus album

Like anyone whose musical education originated from a Taylor Swift-based nucleus, I became familiar with boygenius through Phoebe Bridgers, which then prompted me to listen more to the other members’ solo work as well. In recent months, I have started to develop a much deeper appreciation for Lucy Dacus. The boygenius songs led by her tend to be my favorites, and often the most devastating. “Night Shift” is her best-known solo track, but a lot of her other songs — “Timefighter,” “Fool’s Gold,” “Christine,” and “Triple Dog Dare” to name a few — are criminally underrated, in my opinion. I’ve had her music on loop to a concerning extent in recent weeks. I will never forget the moment MUNA brought her out as a surprise guest at All Things Go NYC; that was the highlight of the whole festival for me.

With all this in mind, you can imagine how excited I am for Dacus’s new album, “Forever Is A Feeling,” which comes out on March 28. I am obsessed with the music video for the lead single “Ankles.” I love the song so much, and the gown is everything. You will catch me wandering art museums with these new songs on repeat to try and properly capture the aesthetic. I am so hype for this new era.

  • Spencer Reid’s return

As a longtime Criminal Minds fan, I have remained a devoted viewer of the show’s rebooted version, Criminal Minds: Evolution. However, it’s undeniably not the same with one of my favorite characters gone. Spencer Reid is the blueprint for men in general, I fear. That’s why the news of Matthew Gray Gubler reprising his role next season made my whole week when I learned of it. Is he coming back permanently? No. Am I scared he’s just going to reappear to get killed off or have something similarly devastating happen? Absolutely. Do I fear his reappearance could be an obstacle to the Jemily hopes I still delusionally cling to? Of course. But that’s all quite secondary to the fact that we are getting the love of my life, Spencer Reid, back on our screens. That’s really more than I could ever ask for.

  • Reconnecting with nature and a childlike sense of wonder now that Instagram is ugly

Those who share my social media addictions likely noticed the devastating Instagram update that occurred a couple of weeks ago. The iconic squares have been replaced with tall hideous rectangles that completely ruin the grid I’ve carefully cultivated for years. I did not realize how important the squares were to me until they were gone. I had, in a sense, developed the “Tetris effect” for Instagram — I saw squares everywhere. Whenever I took pictures of just about anything, I was imagining how they would work in the grid. Now that’s been wiped away. While this is undeniably frustrating, I have been able to view this change through a more positive lens than I’d have expected. With the spell of aesthetic squares broken, I have finally set time limits on the Instagram app, becoming less invested in scrolling and planning posts all the time. I am touching grass. I am living life a bit more freely. It’s honestly been liberating, and I am not turning back. Take this opportunity to free yourself from the shackles of the algorithms. Knowing how these apps work, they’re never going to bring back our beloved squares. We shall build a new and brighter world.

  • New amphibians will be discovered

The other day, I was randomly curious how many new kinds of frogs have invaded human consciousness so far in this century. I did not expect the search results I got. The number was frankly flabbergasting. Out of the over 8,000 amphibian species currently documented, more than 7,000 are frogs and toads, although there’s a lovely diversity of salamanders, newts, and caecilians as well. According to the AmphibiaWeb New Species Lists, scientists are discovering and classifying new amphibian species at a rate of well over 100 per year, and we’ve already gotten 9 new species added to science in the first month of 2025.

Now, as I’ve been learning this semester in my class on the science and ethics of extinction, it can sometimes be murky to define exactly what counts as a “new species” — but what’s not murky is that a lot of amphibians are in serious danger of extinction. I know, I know, I said this is a list of things to look forward to, not bleak things. But two truths can coexist: (1) the global biodiversity loss we’re experiencing right now is scary, and (2) the biodiversity we still have is absolutely incredible and we learn more amazing things about it every day. In 2015, a real-life Kermit the Frog species was discovered in Costa Rica. Refer to My Personal Top 7 Frogs for a few more examples of amphibian greatness. Isn’t it so cool that we get to share a planet with these creatures? And we haven’t even met all of them yet.

This list encompasses a few of the things we can look forward to this year, but remember: this is not even the half of it. You will hear your favorite new music, watch great movies, read excellent books, eat ridiculously good food, witness spectacular sunsets, and laugh too hard to breathe this year. It’s impossible to predict when a lot of this will happen. Just know that it will. There is always something on the horizon to look forward to — but it can certainly help when a few things have specific dates to count down towards. This list has hopefully added a few more weapons to your arsenal of hope. 

Kate Bridges

Conn Coll '27

Hi, I'm Kate and I will ramble about obscure animal facts and my favorite music indefinitely