Diana Angelo
Letter from the Blog Deputy Editor

Technology and the internet were two things, in particular, for which I could never quite acquire a taste. And so the story begins: I couldn’t imagine being at the helm of anything that involved either of them.

I was born before the age of computers, and it wasn’t until I was a senior in high school that we finally had an interweb of our own at home. It was the original dial-up: ding-a-ling, err, beep, beep, beep, err, buhdunk, buhdunk, doo-doo-doot, err, ching-a-ling! I remember the excitement, the anticipation, and the mystery of going online, all which, of course, had plenty of time to simmer and bubble over as the minutes ticked by while that box in front of me dialed and dialed and dialed into space, like a giant puzzle collecting pieces that must have been scattered all over the place.  

And then years went by, and for some reason, the magic that happened inside that little box, and in all the new little boxes, gizmos and gadgets—the magic that delivered the rest of the world into my world with the touch of a button—remained so far beyond anything my mind would allow itself to entertain.

Until recently, I had been successful in sneaking out on and around technology. But then, one day last summer, the 21st century finally caught me—and made it quite clear that my behavior would no longer be tolerated.

Last summer I received an email from our beloved Laura Cronk, the Associate Director of the undergraduate Writing Program, regarding an open editor position on 12th Street. “With the transition to being an online publication,” the email read, “the thinking is that there will be a blog with regular features and then one splashy online issue release. We realized it would be very helpful to have someone who is the primary editor of the blog, with the title, Blog Deputy Editor…would you be interested?” Would I be interested? I knew nothing about being an editor. I knew even less about maintaining a blog—that’s the internet, right? Well, maybe next year, I thought. I couldn’t possibly subject myself or anyone else to my fumbling around on an award-winning journal without learning a thing or two and testing the waters first. I was interested in watching this whole process unfold. I was interested in watching and taking lots of notes. And then next year, perhaps, armed with all my knowledge and notes, I would have been interested in an editor position—in a Blog, gulp, Deputy Editor position.

But that’s not how 12th Street works.

I left our first meeting with a throat full of tears that couldn’t even wait until I got home to pour out. I couldn’t even download, or upload?—or who knows what I was supposed to be doing—the thing—what thing?—the thing I needed to back up the site—or the thing I needed to log onto the blog? Oh, lord.

In the beginning, I remember there being many tearful nights. But with my 12th Street colleagues, there were also plenty of laughs—at my expense, of course—but always with me. We forged on together; they were so forgiving. And a month later, I was learning code. It began as a joint effort with a few of my tech-savvy teammates, but then I was able to play with it a little on my own. By the end of that first month, I was building and maintaining a blog.

Seven months later, I was bequeathed the task of building Issue #9—our first online issue.

That’s how 12th Street works. 12th Street says, “Just dive in. The water’s fine. And there are plenty of lifeguards standing by.” It’s never about coming to the table, or rather, the “fishbowl,” with a plethora of knowledge or expertise. It’s about learning together, fumbling together, challenging each other, and finding each person’s strengths along the way—especially strengths like the ones that were buried under, say, some lame excuse about not growing up with the internet or technology.

Because we’re all students, all learning together, and because many of us walk into the “fishbowl” with nothing but the will to learn at first, 12th Street is, in fact, much like the old dial-up: there’s a lot of excitement, anticipation, and mystery. It’s a puzzle, with pieces scattered all over the place, and no one starts out knowing where those pieces are, where they’re going to fit, or even how many of them there are. We put our heads together, and get some ideas going, and then go out and try to collect those pieces and make sense of them. It takes a while, but in the end, a certain magic happens—a magic that is more than what any of our minds could have, at the onset, entertained. At least, that’s what 12th Street is to me.

It is my complete and utter pleasure to bring the beautiful world that the 12th Street team collected, made sense of, and worked on all year into your world from the inside of that little box that puzzled me for so long.

Thank you, 21st century, for stopping me dead in my tracks last summer. Thank you, Laura, for being the messenger. And thank you, 12th Street team, for helping me navigate through the rubble to find my strengths; for learning with me; for your love, support, and your vision.

–Diana Angelo