I used to think that I had a lot of homework. Then, I became a sophomore in college and encountered an onslaught of endless readings and essays. Initially, I was nervous about the increase of work, but I quickly realized something very important and also very obvious: which is that I really enjoy writing and more than I had previously thought. I noticed that after doing an hour of philosophy homework I became quite tired. But after writing an essay for four hours I felt even more hyper than usual. The fact of the matter is this: writing makes my SOCKS GO UP AND DOWN. These sockies are going up and down for two reasons the first is that ideas are powerful and illuminating and the second is that the spreading of these ideas is one of the most rewarding things a human can do.
I have been writing for the Odyssey for the past six months. I’ve enjoyed coming up with ideas each week and as I have continued to write I have become a much better editor. Indeed the Odyssey does encourage the spreading of ideas through a younger audience, but that is not actually what they care about. The Odyssey is a business that only cares about their own profits. At it's best it's a "glorified blog." Writers are encouraged to share their articles on as many social network platforms as possible. The article with the most shares of that particular week gets 20 dollars and a thousand dollars if it goes viral. The money is a fraction of what the Odyssey actually gets paid from the ads. Money is irrelevant. The fact that the Odyssey is a business that doesn't care about content is what really bothers me.
This being said, there are dozens of incredible articles at Muhlenberg and beyond that have done very well. For example, Sam Narciso’s article “10 Things That Happen When Your The Fat Girl In The Friend Group” instantly comes to mind when I think about great, thought provoking articles that have also gone viral. However, there are other articles like “10 Things That Happen When Your Brother Is Your Best Friend” that have been at the top of the suggested clicks without having any really depth to them.
At Muhlenberg College, we recently had a meeting about the importance of writing articles with depth. The notions of depth can been a great numbers of things. Whether you’re writing satirically, about politics or environmentalism, the only ingredient to good writing is integrity. Don’t waste your own time writing about topics that you will forget about during the coming weeks. Writing is one of the most powerful ways to connect to other human beings and apathy is incredibly dangerous in large doses. The amount of clicks an article gets is irrelevant. The fact that the Odyssey only really cares about business as opposed to content is even more irrelevant. Whether you write satirical articles about bagels or dissections of current political issues, make sure you care about it. Fuck the system and MAKE DEM SOCKS GO UP AND DOWNNN.
