Apply to SPARC 2025!

do it for the baby elephants

It’s winter in New York City, which means that:

1. hundreds of ice skaters doth bestride the rink at Bryant Park, which doesn’t matter to me because I can’t skate, but it does mean my coworkers talk about skating every now and again

2. congestion pricing is now live, and the streets of Manhattan have been clearing up

3. it's time for those of you who are eligible and interested to share your writing with us like a happy baby elephant would

What is SPARC, you might ask? Here's some excerpts from my blog post about it:

• it’s kinda about “growth”, or “doing what’s best for its participants”, or “changing the world”. these alone don’t give us an idea of how to achieve these goals, but they’re aspirational

• it’s about meeting cool people. not only other students, but the staff. it’s nice to have staff who exemplify depth and excellence in diverse ways

• it’s about getting people to be have more agency, whatever that means

• it’s about humaning better, about understanding yourself and others

• it’s about exposing students to things that’ll come back later, about planting seeds

If you want to learn more about the things that happen in SPARC, check out Laura Zhang’s video.

And if you want an idea of who these “cool people” are, well, you're reading this blog. Several of us authors also have personal blogs: Andrew, Laura, Oliver, and me. And here's the blogs of some other SPARC-associated cool people:

• David Yu

• Yan Zhang

• Damon Sasi

• Teresa Hart

• Hamidah Oderinwale

• Claire Wang

• Euan Ong

• Lulie Tanett

• Chris Lakin

• Evan Chen

• Vincent Huang

If these vibe with you, then head to the SPARC website and apply. The deadline is on February 2, so get going!