When people ask us what it is like to teach writing at MIT, they often smile ruefully. Our questioners recognize that our students must be exceptionally bright, but they assume that we face a phalanx of single-minded nerds not much interested in the humanities. However, the students who come through our first-year writing courses defy that stereotype in so many ways. Yes, they are smart, intense, and diligent, and they can write with authority about self-reconfigurable robots and the bioremediation of oil spills, but—given freedom to pursue their own interests—they also write about art, poetry, sports, and food.

Even a quick scan of the table of contents will reveal the breadth of interest and knowledge that our students bring to their work. We have chosen to organize their work simply by genre: personal essays, investigative essays, profiles, and reviews. Under each heading, however, you will discover some surprises: the investigative essay that examines the career paths of two promising young baseball players or the one that probes the themes that have shaped Miyazaki’s anime films, the personal essay that delves deeply into the pleasures of sharing rigatoni covered with Nana’s “five-meat” sauce, or the art review that offers a meditation on the “chaotic motions” of a kinetic sculpture at the MIT Museum. Not quite what our questioners have in mind when they imagine the trials of teaching writing at MIT. Even the works that showcase the recognized strengths of MIT students also offer glimpses of their idiosyncratic preferences and predilections. The profile of an MIT researcher hints at a surprising link to Grimm’s story of the frog prince. A review of the “Conservation of Momentum in Spheres of Unequal Mass” asks us to imagine two children about to “clonk heads” on a jungle gym. Another review reminds us of the exquisite pleasures of a caramel chew before launching into a tough-minded examination of overeating in America. Actually, one of the investigative essays may help us make sense of the idiosyncrasies of the MIT student body; it traces the history of the hacks that have punctuated MIT’s rivalry with Harvard and Cal Tech, hacks that reveal that distinctive MIT combination of “creativity and ingenuity.” In Angles 2013, that combination plays out in many forms.

But, perhaps, most revealing of all are the narrative essays written for our classes. There is nothing predictable about these stories. It may be common knowledge that MIT students come from a remarkable number of countries, cultures, and experiences, but readers may be surprised to discover the intimate and eloquent ways in which they write about those experiences. Students are willing to share these memories because they trust in the curiosity and generosity of their fellow students. It turns out that these are the traits that you can count on when eighteen new MIT students walk into your classroom.

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We would like to thank Clarissa Towle, our editorial assistant, for her great editing and organizational skills, and our WordPress guru, Mukul Kumar Singh, for creating such an attractive and functional new web design.  We would also like to express our gratitude to Rebecca Faery who helped launch Angles and served for many years as a board member and editor.

Cynthia Taft
Lucy Marx