Letter from the Editor

Hello Reader,

Here is Volume 10 after one hell of a year. You don’t need context for the magazine you’re about to read. We’ve shared this year. We know. And yet, I can’t pin it down. I’ve been looking back at past volumes for a way to put my feelings about this one to the page. Every semester, I think it must be a similar feeling. Awe, mostly; and maybe some disbelief. We spend months working, meeting, worrying—sometimes arguing—and then we get to hold something uniquely ours in our own fingers. I keep thinking, it’s been five years, surely someone has said this better than I can, but maybe this is yet another aspect in which this year is different. I, like my peers, rely on the absurd to make sense of my surroundings. We all seem to handle things in our own ways with empathy, humor, and grace. This is to say that I can’t explain this feeling except by a strange comparison.

I feel like a turtle. I’m sticking my neck out so that my little turtle nose might breach the surface of the water where I’ve been submerged for so long. My tiny turtle lungs expand with fresh air, and for a moment I forget I was out of breath. The average freshwater turtle can hold its breath for about thirty-five minutes, but when their metabolisms slow in anticipation of hibernation they can stay submerged for an entire winter.

Perhaps this is the first breath after hibernation. Perhaps you know this feeling, too. Perhaps this metaphor applies to a lot more than this magazine. Perhaps all of us have been used to breathing at thirty-five minute intervals, and winter has revealed a strength in us that we had never hoped to discover.

Fools emerges semesterly to revel in the creativity of her contributors, and breaches again to share those creations with her readers. Her turtle lungs are full of inspiration, grief, memories, and metaphors. The act of sharing these things is well worth the months underwater, holding our breaths. We hope you feel the same.

with care,
Anna Nelson, Editor-in-Chief
& the Fools team