Jeannie Kang ’28 (left), Alex Lin ’28 (middle), and Bruce Ru ’28 (right) were
the 2026 Means Essay finalists.
Alex Lin ’28, Jeannie Kang ’28, and Bruce Ru ’28 declaimed their essays in Kemper Auditorium last Friday, reflecting on their identity, meaningful experiences, and lessons learned. The three students are this year’s nominees for the Means Essay Prize, an award from the English Department founded in 1868 to celebrate student talent and encourage literary engagement.
Kang’s essay, “The Guardian,” was declared the winner of the prize following the reading. In her essay, Kang weaves her recollection of a recent car crash with memories from her childhood, a narrative that explores emotions and vulnerability. Kang discussed the inspiration behind her work and the process of developing her final essay.
“I have something called ‘Jeannie Weekly’ where I publish a story about my life every week and send it to an email list. I wrote about the car crash, and I thought that it’s an interesting essay. So, I decided to think and expand beyond that. The greatest lesson I got from that car crash was about my relationship with my mom and grandma and how anyone can be weak and be strong at a given point in their lives,” said Kang.
Attendee Celine Lee ’28 noted the creative choices that enhanced Kang’s speech.
“When Jeannie was talking about the car incident, it tied very closely to something that happened to me this year. The raw and brutal honesty was very touching and emotional to hear… I also love Jeannie’s, ‘put the hat on, take the hat off.’ I thought that was very fun and dynamic,” said Lee.
Lin’s piece, “Stargazing in the Graveyard,” recounted her experience stargazing in the Chapel Cemetery and her quiet moments reflecting about death. Lin explained why she traveled to the cemetery and what she wished listeners to take away from her essay.
“In the fall, I stargazed a lot because a lot of my friends took [Astronomy]. Because it’s really hard to find a dark spot on campus, we were like, ‘Hey, what’s the one place that’s not the middle of the sanctuary that doesn’t have any lights on campus?’ And it was the graveyard. So, I started going there pretty often at night to look at stars,” said Lin.
She continued, “My essay is a little bit existential. It’s about life and death, what would happen after we died, whether or not that really matters, and how that affects how I view being alive. I want people to take more notice of how beautiful the world is around them because they won’t have it for very long.”
As a writer, Ellaine Ban ’28 highlighted Lin’s essay and expressed admiration for all finalists’ unique writing styles.
“For Alex’s essay, the descriptive capabilities and her writing itself really stuck with me. She described the constellations in one section of her essay really well and in such a beautiful way. I remember being really in awe of how admirably and beautifully she described them…[The writers] allowed their unique creative voices to shine through there. It was a good experience for me to listen to other writers and also gain inspiration from them,” said Ban.
Ru’s piece, “Wahroonga Ballad,” is a story about making home no matter where you are and about understanding where we have been in order to shape who we will become. He shared his mother’s tradition of planting bok choy in each new home they moved to, and how it became a symbol of these values.
“I have a very multicultural life story. I have a Chinese background, and we immigrated to Australia. This has always been a very unique aspect of my identity that I wanted to explore. I decided to take this in an interpretive direction, so I wrote about our vegetable garden. I talked about how no matter where we moved, my mother would always grow bok choy pats whenever we moved for school or immigrating. Eventually, I wrote about much more than just that vegetable garden,” said Ru.
He continued, “I think the main message is that whenever you are in a new place or you feel like you want to belong, there’s always a very long context of past, either past traumas, opportunities, changes that shaped the place that you are in. I wanted to have the reader understand that issues like racism and colonialism aren’t the fault of one person. It’s a climate that has developed over time, and there’s lots of historical forces.”
Ayden McDonald ’28 recalled being one of the first to read Ru’s essay in their shared English class. The themes of Ru’s essay resonated deeply with McDonald, who praised its complexity and nuance.
“I had the privilege of having Bruce in my English class. I’d actually been able to see the essay, at least in its pre-edited form. Even then, I still remember how empowering and inspiring it was. It deals with a very complicated subject of identity and immigration in a settler colonial state in a very personal and humanizing way. It was one of the best works in terms of how it dealt with such a complicated subject,” said McDonald.
Teaching Fellow in English Isaac Gittleman served as a judge for the Means Essay Prize. He recalled his experience as an aspiring writer in high school, emphasizing the prize as a valuable opportunity and platform.
“When I was in high school, there weren’t really opportunities to do creative writing very much, and there certainly weren’t opportunities celebrated by the school to reward students for putting extra effort outside of class on their craft. So, [the Means Essay Prize] is a really amazing opportunity to highlight and reward students for all the amazing creative work that they do,” said Gittleman.
