This summer I had a working class tour of the Island in a Toyota Tacoma with broken AC. I spent a late night on the beach learning the Portuguese words for the moon and stars. In the morning, someone makes an incredibly obvious observation: “The sun is rising. I can see it,”. Words aren’t poetic just because they sound like surface level ancient proverbs. They are poetic because of their meaning- the retrospect of laughter every time I see the sun rise. I watched the blood moon at 5:30 am on November 8th; soon after it came the sun. And so the quote crossed my mind. I can see it. Stories aren’t meaningful just because they tell you something. They make you feel something. In holometabolous larvae, the imaginal disc is a structure that will become part of the adult- a limb, an organ, so forth. On the third floor of Fernald hall (est. 1911) there is a set of rules written in chalk. You would have to see it yourself to understand.

I learned this fall some things that can’t be put into words and plenty of things that can. Of the null hypothesis and of the corpus cardiacum and Keynesian macroeconomics and Haudenosaunee Nationals Lacrosse and this thing called Elysium. This November I also wrote over twenty-thousand words of a novel in an attempt to do what writers do - make people understand things that are impossible to put into words. All the same, I don’t have enough words to explain just how MVYouth represents the things that are important to me, the things I try to write about. The work, the academics, the friends. Thank you again for the connections and opportunities for which I owe these words. I can’t wait to see what next semester will hold.