Letter from the Editor

It’s springtime! The sun is starting to shine (sometimes) and temperatures are starting to rise above 45 degrees (occasionally,) and we’re… still in Zoom University. Still spitting in tubes twice a week. Still possessing only a fraction of our senses of time and connection to others. This semester has absolutely FLOWN by for me, in part because in many ways it still feels like we’re back in the fall, even back in last spring, when campus shut down and everything changed. It’s been strange, reconciling the fact that the day-today is largely the same with the reality of how much has happened in just one calendar year.

And now we have the change of a set of vaccines that are available like never before. Hopefully by the time you’re reading this you and I and yours and mine will have the added safety of some antibodies that took a herculean effort to produce and distribute. Hopefully we’ll be reading headlines that say anything besides “The U.S. is now in its ____ wave of Covid.” Hopefully we’ll have hugged a friend or family member without fear. It kind of feels naive to hope, after all we’ve been through and in the face of what more we’ll have to trudge through, but as the buds begin to bloom and the birds start to chirp it’s starting to feel a little easier to try, on the best days.

This senior year of mine has really given new meaning to “giving it the old college try.” I have a new value and respect for my effort and the effort of others, for getting up and putting whatever energy you can muster into even just one task for the day. From screen fatigue to soul-sapping midterms and thesis work, being able to try is starting to look more and more like a gift. There’s a lot I’d like to forget about this time in my life, but that new perspective on how much it means to just try is not on the list.

In this issue, I see the themes of reflection and looking forward. We have pieces discussing the effects of pollution and algal treatments, and pondering on how we treat childbirth and plastic waste. We have the results of long-term research projects, and old assignments turned into art. But we also have questions, curiosities, future work to be done. Paths tracing where we’ve been, and probes into where we could go. Let’s dare to hope that we’re heading towards better times, and on the good sunny days, let’s dare to try to make the times better ourselves.

Good health and rest to you,

Lexus Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief