The following essays, written by students in the introductory writing subjects at MIT, were selected for publication in Angles 2016 by an editorial board of lecturers. The eleven works are categorized by theme and linked below, each with an enticing excerpt and image. For more information on Angles and the thematic categories chosen for this edition, please see our About Angles page.
Exploring the Self
The Jackfruit Tree by Karan Kashyap
“So are you all set for America?” I overheard my grandfather ask my father. I remember my heart sinking into my gut.
Shooting Things and Hitting Them by anonymous
There he is. The one queer Asian that I discovered in high school, the one that helped me realize that I wasn’t alone, that I might be just as normal as the next person.
The Day I Got Hooked on the Mountains by Laura Treers
Each step pushed me higher and brought me further into another world, a windswept landscape so entirely elemental and wild.
Exploring Science and Society
Fusion: Joining the Quest for the Renewable Energy’s “Holy Grail” by Milo Knowles
Imagine a world without fossil fuels, where humans can produce an emission-less, inexhaustible, and completely renewable source of energy. This is the utopian world of fusion energy.
Does It Take a Village? by Kathleen Xu
The Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP), the largest and oldest political party in Sweden, introduced parental leave insurance in 1974.
Spacesuits and Drones by Andrew DeNucci
The MVL’s BioSuit™ concept, which aims for a “second skin” design, utilizes shape memory alloys—metals that assume their “remembered” shape at a set temperature.
Brave New Worlds by Francesca Schembri
T. L. Taylor explores new worlds. Unlike traditional explorers, Taylor does not traverse oceans, scale mountains, or shoot between galaxies at warp speed.
The Sum of Its Parts by Anna Martinez
Before my nose is an array of shapes: squares, circles, stars, rectangles. These shapes form the mold that slowly creates and instantly destroys a toy chair.
Food for Thought
Lessons from the Kitchen Doorway by Tim Lu
The scents would get stronger as I got close, and I would smell the usual suspects: garlic, soy sauce, and ginger.
Instinctively, I spat out the villain in my mouth and ran to a water cooler in the corner, allowing the icy water onto my face to extinguish the fire.
(courtesy of Paolo Neo)
Edible Magic by Francesca Schembri
Life is studded with little pockets of magic. These are the moments with mysterious emergent qualities, when the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, when one plus one somehow equals three.