The cover of Angles 2021 features a student working on a laptop, comfortably nestled within a sculpture on the MIT campus. We chose this photo because it evokes central themes of student life during the pandemic year at MIT: a sense of aloneness and a need for safety coupled with creativity, resilience and determination.
The ten pieces featured in Angles 2021 were all created within the online culture of our foundational writing classes during the pandemic year 2020-2021. On March 10, 2020, President Rafael Reif announced that MIT courses would move online after Spring break due to the worsening COVID-19 pandemic. This announcement would reshape MIT education radically throughout the following academic year, as instructors scrambled to adapt to teaching on Zoom and students confronted the challenges of an unexpected and very different college experience. Writing instructors worried about how the pandemic and the transition to online education would negatively affect student motivation as well as the quality and depth of their writing. We discovered, instead, that engagement with writing remained high in our Zoom classes and individual conferences. Many instructors assumed that most students would want to write explicitly about the pandemic and the changes it wrought – for better and worse – in their lives. In that light, we also imagined that Angles 2021, born of those two Zoom semesters, would be largely a pandemic journal.
But reality is always more complex than our expectations. For the undergraduate writers featured in Angles 2021, while the pandemic was always an influence, it often stood as a silent partner. In only two pieces, Paige Dote’s evocative personal essay “Drops” and Rihn’s engaging graphic narrative “Portrait of the Artist as a Young College Student,” do we see the authors focus on the impact of the pandemic on their lives. “Drops” meditates on the author’s visit, as the pandemic break began, to a beloved community café where she had composed her high school essays. “Portrait of the Artist…” captures the wild creativity of the East Campus murals in the author’s MIT home, left behind suddenly as Rihn left campus in March 2020 for a temporary home in Maine with friends and a new explosion of artistic intensity. All of our essays, however, in their richly textured prose, careful research and thoughtful reflection, were influenced by the losses suffered and opportunities created by the pandemic.
Some of our essays reflect on the process of constructing a personal identity of ethnic and cultural heritage and personal passions. Laura Schmidt-Hong’s “Halves” meditates on coming to terms with her hybrid identity as a young German-Chinese woman. With sensual imagery evoking the flowers, sarees and chai tea of India, Sadhana Lolla, in “Jasmine Blossoms,” pays tribute to her grandmother and to her cultural heritage. In “Comic Relief,” Anusha Puri uses humor imaginatively to transport us into her transition in high school from a “shy nerd” to a pun-loving standup comic.
While some personal essays evoke nostalgia, others portray trauma. In a haunting journal-style narrative, “Ghost Town,” Kaleb Desta, living with his family during the pandemic, reveals the daily terrors of their first-hand experience of civil war and violence in his home community in Tigray, Ethiopia.
In other memorable essays in Angles 2021, our writers have also responded to public issues, most notably the recent sense of social and environmental crisis in the U.S. Over the past few years, we have witnessed the growth of anti-racist movements and the emergence of a long-overdue national conversation about the legacy of structural racism. Our current sense of urgency about racial justice inspires engagement with the history of movements for racial equality and Black empowerment. Aishah Jones’s compelling rhetorical analysis essay, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” responds to the current moment by skillfully analyzing a classic speech by Malcolm X in the context of his time and ours.
Lastly, we live in a time in which science and technology play a central role in solving national and global problems. MIT students are alert to the need to communicate scientific and technical knowledge clearly to the public and to use scientific knowledge to protect ourselves and the planet. “Cellular Symphony,” a beautifully illustrated essay by Laura Schmidt-Hong, narrates her personal passion for science from childhood through MIT. Jessica Pan’s thoughtful review stresses the critical importance of documentary film, which creatively employs both logos and pathos, as a vehicle for educating the public about science and the natural world. Mario Ibrahim’s research essay, “Plastics,” takes the reader inside the fascinating history of plastics and explores alternatives to plastic in the age of climate change.
As editors, we are honored to have worked with such talented and motivated writers over the course of the publication process this summer. Reflecting on the writing of our student authors, we are reminded of the many ways in which writing can promote self-expression, resilience and civic engagement in a challenging and unsettling time. We invite you to savor the pieces within Angles 2021.
Karen Boiko, Susan Carlisle, Cynthia Taft, and Andrea Walsh
Editors, Angles 2021