When first starting to write on Odyssey, in all honestly, I was nervous. Nervous to put my ideas and beliefs out there. Nervous to even see if people read what I put out. Nervous to be vulnerable with people I do not personally know. For me, I was also hesitant on how I would write a perfect piece every week.

But, then I realized not only is anything ever going to be perfect, especially stories that I write on Odyssey. Throughout my Odyssey experience, I will grow as a writer; I will become more intelligent, wittier, more fashion-forward, more experienced in life and more familiar with who I am writing to.

I believe that in everything we experience throughout life that we grow from it. Whether it is trying out a sport you do not like, trying new foods, going to new places, developing new fears, or even burning old bridges just for a new one to replace it, we learn from every experience in life, the positive and the negative. But, that is only if we can learn to finish what we start.

Maybe it is just me, but I feel like while my generation has a lot to offer, we have become so wrapped up in the quickest route to finishing something, that if we can't find one... we quit altogether. With the increase in technological advancements and the decrease of the tasks we must do without the facilitation of technology, our attention span and patience have dramatically declined. Thus, we never finish what we start.

Think about it. That workout you told yourself you would do, but you either decide "you're too busy to get to it today" or completely cut back on how much cardio you actually planned for because it was too hard. Or that book you picked up and read a few chapters of, but then decided you had another episode of Netflix to get to and never picked that book up again.

Or that diet you were completely owning for 3 days but then saw that piece of chocolate cake in the window display at the bakery on the street corner, and you just had to have it because you let your self-control disappear and after all one piece won't hurt right? Even in school. Seniors in high school are the absolute worst about it. I WAS THE ABSOLUTE WORST ABOUT IT.

After 13 years of sitting behind a desk all day long, yes it is tiring, but no you are not done. As seniors, we all felt the legendary senioritis at an all-time high and half-did everything we turned it (if we even turned it in). I found myself contemplating sleeping through my first period class a little too often because I felt that I was "technically done" and there was no other reason to continue trying (no I did not actually, it was just a thought to any of my old teachers reading this!!!); I was accepted to multiple colleges, I had a great GPA, I was involved in just about everything, so why did I need to keep trying?

But, then I thought about who I am as a person. I am extremely driven, dedicated, and determined, but most of all I am self-motivated. Being a competitive figure skater for eight and a half years I developed all four of these characteristics as well as an amazing skating career. I would get told "I could not do [this]" or "I would never be successful if I did not fix [this]"; I constantly got torn down because I had to in order to push myself and to find that motivation within myself to keep going and prove whoever said I could not, wrong.

I had to learn to finish what I had started in figure skating. When things got tough, that was only the beginning of a new journey for me in the sport. It was never as fun, as alluring, or as daring when I was at the top of my game as it was when I had something to prove and when I saw the need to be better.

See, I will forever be in debt to the sport of figure skating (not literally, that would be my father's bank account it broke, I was only 13) because of the young woman it developed me into. It is because of the sport that I learned to finish what I start, and that is my first challenge. Read that book cover to cover, finish the difficult workout and diet you initially planned, walk across that graduation stage tall and proud because you know that you finished with as much effort as you began with.

Keep running this crazy race that is life, and start finishing what you begin.