Editor's Note

Dear Readers, A writer thanked me this week for letting her write a story. The piece had just entered its second month of reporting as we sat down for our second weekend of editing. We painted the doc in a rainbow of edits and revisions, restructuring and revising, debating and conversing — trying to distill the days of reporting and researching into a digestible number of pages. The struggle of considering each sentence, each word, each mark of punctuation was long and arduous. But as we finished, she smiled widely and told me how grateful she was for this process, and for the chance to explore those things and ideas in the world that lit her up — to pour thousands of words onto the page in pursuit of her passion and be asked to think through each one of them. I smiled back, almost teary, though of course, the thank you was not needed. What else is our magazine for? In its finest iteration, the magazine is a place of inquiry and discovery of oneself as much as the world around them. It encourages its writers to look for the mountain in the mole hill, to take their curiosity by the hand and follow it until the pair can go no further. Many of this week’s writers greeted their curiosity with both arms stretched open. Jona P. Liu, for example, begins with a forgotten stamp, and ends with a miraculously insightful inquiry into how memories form around objects that have no way of carrying those memories with them. Anne Sun expects to report on a cat parade, but meets a woman who speaks her parents language and finds herself telling a stranger things her closest friends have only begun to hear her mention. A new batch of compers turn the ordinary places they visit, such as Hong Kong and Veggie Grill, into sites of investigation on labor and locality. Astrid S.H. Aggour pushes us all to consider the role of duty in our futures, while Sarit O. Greenwood wonders whether the world still turns if she stops watching. As journalists and writers, what we care about — where we focus our attention — matters. What we leave out says just as much as what we report on. But how do we get people to care about those things we feel are important to consider? And why should we try? The weight of where we place our attention permeates fields and concentrations. For example, the cover story this week focuses on a group of scientists advocating for a radical shift in research priorities, urging scientists to consider what they’re missing when they shoot for the moon and ignore the world around them. As we prepare to step down at the end of the semester, we hope this place continues to offer young writers with burning questions the chance to ask them; that this board empowers young writers with the knowledge that they have a unique voice that they can trust; and that the long magazine tradition continues in which we allow space for the possibility that picking through archived Harvard facebook websites or shadowing 15 tedious student jobs can be just as revelatory as any number of scoops or breaking stories. What else is our magazine for? Thank you all for your commitment to this precious publication. Working with you is the best part of being your chairs. We hope you know how dearly we will soon miss it. AJBS + KJK