"Once I saw the prompt for the op-ed, I knew it would be the perfect chance to write something related to my love for stars," said our Op-Ed Writing Competition winner, Ariana Bhargava. This February, our writers crafted fiercely grounding essays that reflected themes of environmentalism, animal rights, crisis response, societal class, and more.
Read on to learn what the winners selected by Guest Judge Aymann Ismail have to say about the process behind their excellent work.
Winner: Ariana Bhargava (India), age 14
Read the winning piece here!
What opinion of yours has changed the most in the past few years?
As a child, I thought bright city lights were amazing and beautiful. I was attracted to brightly lit restaurants and parks. In fact, I was even scared of the dark. But when I went to visit my grandparents a few years ago (right after the pandemic ended, I believe), I was shocked to see how many stars filled the sky. It had been years since I had last seen such a sky in real life. It immediately brought back so many childhood memories. I started sitting outside at night, admiring the stars before being called in by my grandmother. Upon coming back home once the vacation was over, I looked up why we can’t see many stars in cities. I didn’t do much research at the time, only reading a bit about light pollution and smog before stopping. Once I saw the prompt for the op-ed, I knew it would be the perfect chance to write something related to my love for stars. I did lots of research because I wanted to shed light on the problem that many people ignore. I proposed solutions of balancing light and darkness and only using light where needed to reduce skyglow.
From being someone who loved bright city lights, I’ve grown to prefer lights only in places where they are needed. I think my opinion on the usage of lights is the one that changed the most over the last few years. All this research made me realise that darkness isn’t something to fear, rather it is something we need in order to see one of nature’s most beautiful masterpieces—stars. I hope my op-ed was able to bring about a similar change among the readers as well.
In the opening paragraph of your winning op-ed, you use an anecdote to ground the reader. Can you share more about how your memories and experiences are intertwined with the piece you wrote about light pollution?
As a kid, I just loved stars. Seeing the stars from my grandparents’ village was probably the second most exciting thing from the trip (the first thing of course being meeting my grandparents and uncle). After I grew up and noticed that I could barely see stars in the sky from my apartment in the city, I was devastated. I only noticed this after coming back from a trip to my grandparents’ place. It horrified me that I had never noticed the stark difference between city skies and village skies before. I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. When I researched the topic and found light pollution (skyglow) to be the problem, I was surprised by how easy it actually can be to fix the issue.
“But now in the city, seeing a constellation is so rare that it makes me feel lucky” is one of the lines quoted by the guest judge, Aymann Ismail. The inspiration for this line comes from an experience I had a few months ago. There was a meteor shower that was supposed to happen at nearly midnight, which was supposed to be visible even from cities. My parents and I went to a nearby park at around midnight in hopes to see it. While we may not have been able to see it (we came out too early, it seems), we got to see a constellation—Orion. Before that day, I couldn’t remember a single instance of seeing a constellation in the city. I felt so lucky to have seen it that I could barely sleep that night. I was constantly looking out my window, admiring the constellation and praying to see the meteor shower. By talking about stars and how rare it is to see them in cities along with using my own experience, I wanted to remind people about their memories of a star-filled sky. I really hope I got at least some of them to look up at the sky and notice the stars or the lack of stars.
Runner-Up: Lizzie Blonder (United States), age 17
Read the runner-up piece here!
Guest Judge Aymann Ismail praises your piece for how specific it was. How would you advise other writers to incorporate specificity into their own pieces?
I like to hone in on one specific sensory detail that sticks out when writing about an event retrospectively. For example, in my piece, the woman’s trembling voice over the loudspeaker. That was, in the moment, the detail that let me know that this wasn’t an ordinary lockdown since I’m so used to the announcements being made using a calm, measured tone. Instead of describing a scene in broad terms, narrowing your descriptions to focus on seemingly insignificant but descriptive details helps your reader feel engaged in the scene.
What’s a question you wish more people were asking about responses to traumatizing experiences?
Since everyone experiences trauma differently, there isn’t one correct way to respond when someone tells you about their experience. What I might want to hear after telling someone about my experience, another person may not. I wish more people would ask, “How can I support you in the way that feels best right now?” When someone shares something traumatic, there’s often pressure to say the “right” comforting phrase or to immediately try to fix things. This question helps to tailor your response to fit the person’s needs.
Best Peer Review: Yingyi Jia (New Zealand), age 18
Read the winning peer review here!
How do you balance offering constructive criticism with respecting a writer's opinion and voice in an op-ed?
It can be quite a delicate balance at times to pitch in your own thoughts while respecting the writer's own opinion and voice, with my comments I try to not use definitive language that commands change, instead suggestions padded with tentative words like 'perhaps', 'maybe's and 'might's to make it less confronting. I also often pose my suggestion as a question to the writer asking them "what do you think?", this way the constructive criticism feels like it's just something they can think about and they will always have the final say on whether the feedback is helpful to their op-ed or not. No one wants to share their writing and have someone else pointing out every flaw and then being commanded to change it a specific way, so when offering constructive criticism I would always think 'how would I want someone else to comment on my op-ed?', and base my tone and word choice around how I, myself would want to receive the feedback. That usually works wonders.
What makes you stop and reread a sentence in an op-ed?
Two instances that I would stop and reread a sentence in an op-ed is when it contains ideas that weren't expanded on, or that it doesn't effectively assist in getting their argument across. For the first instance, for example if the sentence reads 'The concept of 'adulthood' is completely socially constructed and manipulative.', and then isn't further elaborated on, it would leave me wondering "Socially constructed, how? Manipulative, how?". The second instance would mostly be when I understand the point the writer is trying to make in a sentence, but perhaps a word choice or way of explaining is not the most suitable. But of course there are many times where I stop and reread a sentence when it has really clever wordplay that has a lot of impact, and precisely tugs at your emotions!