First Essay Contest Winners

Thank you so much to all who entered the inaugural Night Owls essay contest! Your essays were moving and thought provoking. Click here to find out who the winners are, and read their essays!

And, as we get ready for tonight’s conversation, check out some quotes from a few of our other excellent submissions:

“This is a call to evolve. A call to recognize when consumption has costs and to revise our economic models to reflect and measure this. A call to understand how our moral circle changes when we have the opportunity to include ‘human’ as part of our conception of the Self. Many try to find the positive in this pandemic, but this does not serve us well. Forcing a positive outlook makes us blind to the reality of our situation” – Mia Lecinski, “Tomorrow’s Plea for Moral Consideration”

“If we succumb to the myths of a new normal, it will not only be we who suffer, only we who have to get used to novel paradigms; our thinking will suffer, since we won’t really be together.” – Matt Rosen, “What Thinking Stands to Lose Today”

“Those small lines that form around the professor after lecture are no more; you have to write an email, and you are already at your computer. Although we have lost the ability to do some things, everything we can do has been put within arm’s reach. To that extent, our homes have become the new classroom and the way we treat it will affect how we continue to learn.” – Derrick Tang

“Much has and will be made of how teaching looks through the interface of screen and camera. But whether this attempt fails or succeeds already implies a logic, a belief: that knowledge is to be consumed. So, the lecture can be given on tablet, seminars held over phone, books can scanned into pdfs. Everything can be recorded.” – Noah Toyonaga