Kate Harris is aiming herself for the surface of Mars. Marce Abare burns to bring justice, clean water, and food to the poor and oppressed. And both of these young women had the gall to stride into our office and politely but firmly inform us that they were about to embark on an adventure and that we were about to help. Kate was bound for Antarctica, the nearest thing to frozen Mars she could find on this over-warm planet of ours. Marce was heading to Haiti to work in clinics for the poor. The deal they proposed was this: each would write a story about what she learned, and we would pay her something for the story, to help cover the cost of the trip.
Had either of them ever written a magazine story? Well, no. Or handled a camera? No, not exactly. Didn’t they know that writers usually labor for years before they can render a readable paragraph? Sure, they’d heard that. Then what on Earth, we asked, made them think they could do it?
This question startled them both. As they saw it, they could do any dang thing they set their minds to, on this planet or the next.
So that’s how they closed the deal, with that utterly unshakable confidence that they would venture off to some dangerous place and come back with their lives and a story worth printing. We gave them a few instructions. They listened. I mean, they listened. And then they went away and did their thing.
Kate and Marce aren’t on the cover — at least, not yet. But that same drive for adventure is something we find in every corner of this issue. Otto Zhou ventures out to the frontiers of the infinitesimally small to retool the physics of x-rays. Joe DeSimone pushes himself out of his comfort zone to take on the chemistry of fuel cells. And with them each step of the way go students very much like Kate and Marce — students who know that the best way to learn is by finding a problem worth solving, then pushing it right to the edge.
