For some of you, seeing a new article from me is going to come as a bit of a shock, and to be fair, it’s probably more of a shock to me. I put some real blood, sweat, and tears into Odyssey over the past year and a half, and in the act of being as transparent as I can be, I don’t really know if I could tell you what I gained from the experiences I’ve had with it, but I know for a fact that the ability Odyssey provides its content creators to publish content unique to themselves each week is the most authentic guarantees out there right now, and I love it for its quirkiness.

For a little backstory, I came into Clark University’s community page as a writer, as that was what we were called at the time, and for the first month, everything was great. Halfway through November, almost everyone quit, and for fear of losing such a great opportunity, I decided one month was long enough to have the experience required to lead the team, and so I became the Editor in Chief, and built the team back up from two (including myself) to about 14 in a few months.

One of the things that creating content for an organization such as Odyssey requires, however, is consistency, which is one thing that Clark community has kind of notoriously lacked (and that is absolutely including me, just for the record). Anyway, it got to the point where I was in a very good relationship with my Managing Editor and the majority of my team, but I wasn’t setting really any precedence for consistency, so I was replaced. Sure, it was a blow to my ego, and sure, it was kind of out of the blue, but it was also completely necessary and inevitable.

Since then, I’ve been a much more personal writer, focusing on creating my own stories and poems and such, and trying not to launch myself into any heated feuds on social media. Without Odyssey, however, I wasn’t working through my feelings as much with what was going on around me, so I’ve become pretty numb to all of the horrible things that are being said and done around me, and I guess I kind of got tired of sitting around not saying anything.

All things considered, I am studying abroad in Scotland, and my schedule here is nothing like my schedule in the US, so I feel that I have a lot more free time to sit down and commit to writing for longer periods of time than I could at Clark, which is partially why I’m back. The main reason, though, is that I kept Clark’s Odyssey community around for a reason. I knew that Clark needed something like Odyssey because it changed my life for the better, no matter what anybody says. I’ve had some incredible experiences working for and with Odyssey, and want to continue to have those experiences for as long as I can manage it, so to speak. Writing for Odyssey has given me the confidence I have tried so hard to learn on my own, and gives me the confidence to voice opinions I’d otherwise be inclined to keep silent and to myself. I’ve spent my life quiet and reserved, and writing for Odyssey essentially eliminates that social barrier that keeps me that way, and I love that.

And yes, that is, in fact, me dressed as a traffic cone, that is my friend dressed as Lord Farquaad from Shrek, and as I made very sure, he is well aware that ogres have layers. And something about a donkey.