Greetings everyone! Welcome to the second issue of Plato’s Response. For this issue, we’ve adopted the theme Farewells. But before we get started, a word from our senior editor.

There once was a man addicted to phone booths. Easy Rawlins–Walter Mosely’s fictional detective–perpetually uncomfortable with his state of being, chose to deny life’s difficulties. Rather than accepting them and making peace, giving himself the opportunity to eventually relax, he spent every moment he could moving from phone booth to phone booth. He kept himself constantly between destinations, inhabiting a series of liminal spaces, and to that end never reconciled with himself.

I empathize with Rawlins. Sometimes I wish to insert a few quarters and pick up the phone. I’m not sure who will be on the other end of the line, but the warmth of the shelter–the fact that for a moment it is all that exists–will be enough to comfort me. 

Much of the Academy is a transitional space. We leave our home high schools, immerse ourselves in a strange highschool-college amalgamation, and eventually leave for universities or destinations unknown. In other words, many of us are in the phone booth right now, struggling to understand the fact that we must step away and leave to a new part of our lives. Our future in some ways feels definitive, set in stone. In other ways, our future is undefined. And once we hang up the phone, we must reconcile with it all.

This moment is overwhelming and heartbreaking. We have built up lives here, creating new relationships and celebrating achievements. For some it may feel like a kind of home. In conversations, I have noticed I refer to Muncie as my home more than my actual hometown of Noblesville. How are we meant to just explode outwards, our own Big Bang, into so many other parts of the world? All we must do is put down the phone, and exit the booth.

By hanging up, we allow ourselves to face the hardships we know we will struggle through. Although we recognize the pain that may come as a result, we also understand it will be worth it in the end. 

I have only been with Plato’s Response for a short time, but that has been its only time. Editing for the journal has been a sort of liminal space for me, transitioning between the start of my writing career to all that lies ahead. Yet the journal remains permanent, a piece of the Academy to give space for creative energies and to cultivate so many writers yet to come. Much like The Academy, Plato’s Response will continue to serve its purpose as a phone booth. For the future writers of the Indiana Academy, this will be a place of comfort before we (and they) inevitably hang up, exit, and face new lives.

Thank you for this limited time. Farewell.

Jordan Heaviland, Editor in Chief

Just one more thing before you go! We have some thanks to give:

Thank you so much to Dr. Josh Myers for all your administrative and editing work, and thanks to Dr. Phillip Lobo for showing up to sing Chappel Roan and get pied. Thanks so much to Melinda Palackel for this issue’s epic front cover. And, finally, thank you to our wonderful staff writers and to the Academy community: your creativity keeps us alive!

Farewell for now,

The Plato’s Response Editors

Cover art by Melinda Palackel