My Facebook friends have been sharing Odyssey articles since Odyssey started. I used to see these articles, “open letters,” lists, etc. My initial reaction was like, "wow," these are really annoying and they are all so unoriginal and overdone. Until one day last March, I was scrolling through Facebook one morning when I saw an article from Odyssey actually written by someone I knew. I remember thinking, “I could do that.” I started reading Odyssey articles, and I found that they weren’t as unoriginal as I thought. Each one was unique with a genuine and fresh perspective. I decided to apply, thinking that I could easily write one article once a week, and that was all I would do.
A few days after applying, I received an email explaining that I could write, but my articles could not be published until I had a team, because Odyssey is team based. Somehow, it suddenly became my responsibility to recruit 14 other people who were also interested in writing. This part was difficult. I posted flyers on social media and talked to all my friends about it at school. No response.
I had to step up my game. I had a teacher send an email to the entire school, explaining what Odyssey was, its goals and the opportunity to be a part of the team at my school. To my surprise, I started getting responses. At least ten people responded with interest. They applied, and they were accepted. I was stuck in the 10-12 range forever. By this point, it had been a month since I applied, and I started to get impatient. So, I started reaching out to different clubs, sororities and other student organizations. I finally got the last two writers that I needed! However, my journey was far from over.
After single-handedly acquiring a full team of 15 writers, we were missing one thing: an editor-in-chief. My managing editor reached out to me and my team and asked if anyone was interested in being EIC. I had never considered being EIC before, but at this point I felt that this whole thing was my baby. So, I volunteered to be EIC. After an interview, I was accepted for the job. My first duty as EIC quickly arose; I needed to encourage my writers to submit a total of 15 articles among them before we could launch our team.
I emailed, GroupMe chatted and texted my group members. I still didn’t have enough articles. I held a group meeting. I wrote three articles myself. It was a lot of hard work, but, finally, we got enough articles and launched. It was the end of May, almost three months since I started thinking about applying for Odyssey.
I never intended to start a team at my school, and I surely never intended to become the leader of this team. All I wanted was to quietly and independently write for Odyssey. That being said, I am so glad and thankful that it turned out to be so much more than that. I am so happy that I was forced outside of my comfort zone to talk to new people, reach out to my peers and recruit. I made so many new connections along the way. I am even more gratified to be given the opportunity to be EIC. I have not had a chance to take a leadership role since I’ve been in college, and even though I didn’t think Odyssey would lead me to one, I am excited that it has. As EIC, I have had the amazing experience of discovering truly talented writers at my school, which is full of engineers, mathematicians, and scientists. So, even if I never thought I’d be an EIC, it has been a truly awesome journey, and I look forward to my future with Odyssey.
