2016, what a year. Actually what the heck happened this year? I feel like this is one of the weirdest years I have ever experienced in my 20 years on the planet, and I personally am thankful that it’s almost over. Did you know it’s going to be one second longer? Yeah. Thanks, Obama.
Disclaimer: if you aren’t caught up with Season 6 of Game of Thrones, there’s a huge spoiler. Sorry.
Harambe
There’s a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to the killing of Harambe. We are in our seventh month of mourning this gorilla. 15,000 adults voted for him. Legend.
Pokemon Go
Pokemon Go hit us like a wrecking ball in July. It was everywhere and it was so entertaining. (I mean it sounded like it from reading the news articles about it; personally I’ve never played.) But with people walking into traffic and finding dead bodies, it was so crazy that even the Vice President of the University of Minnesota, Pamela Wheelock, had to send out a public safety report about playing on campus. Sadly, like any good thing, it lost popularity quite quickly, but at least it gave the world a reason to go outside!
Summer Olympics
The Summer Olympics also happened this year, along with some drama that was almost as entertaining as watching the men’s swimming team walk around the pool deck. Ryan Lochte tried to get attention by staging a fake robbery, Gabby Douglas didn’t get gold and was accused of being unpatriotic and bitter towards her teammates, and who could forget Michael Phelps retiring after getting his 23rd olympic medal?
Lemonade
Beyonce dropped her visual album, Lemonade, in April as an hour long movie on HBO. Between getting into Formation and finding Becky with the good hair, Beyonce fans fell even more in love with their leader.
Long Live Jon Snow
GOD BLESS, JON SNOW IS ALIVE. Any fan of Game of Thrones let out a huge sigh of relief when our beloved woke from the dead in the second episode of season 6, then almost died again in a pile of bodies (how I feel during finals week), BUT then was crowned King of the North (hopefully how I feel after this week) and we all fell more in love with his beautiful face than we were before.
Fallen Heroes
Although 2016 was a year of laughing at memes to get us through, we lost some amazing souls. Game of Thrones’ Peter Vaughan, Willy Wonka’s Gene Wilder, Minnesota’s own love Prince, and Harry Potter’s Alan Rickman are just a few of the very talented people we lost in 2016.
Campus Memories
On our own home turf here in at the U, students banded together to fight against hatred on campus, we welcomed the largest freshman class in 46 years, and we Tik Tok’d with Ke$ha.
Well, we did it Gophers. We got through another year, another semester, and even more Netflix shows. Have an amazing winter break. You earned it! Her Campus will see you in 2017!