I am currently enrolled in a poetry course at my university and I have a love/hate relationship with the course. There is a lot of writing and creativity involved that is not always at the forefront but there is also the feeling that I am actually getting something out of this class.

I am able to write down my thoughts without anybody tell me they are wrong or are not good enough. I have written good and I have written bad poems in this class but I got something out of all of them.

Being a college student is stressful and we all know building up stress without a release is bad. Poetry is one of my releases.

I often write about the events in my life, good or bad, and turn them into poetic stories. Most people do not care what goes on in my life so I do not write it for them but instead write poems for myself.

Keeping stress bottled up can lead to health problems and further stress. Writing eliminates a lot of that stress because I am able to compact it into a short poem. Large stressful moments can easily be shortened if thought about and processed.

I never really wrote poems before this class, but I am glad I registered for this semester. I have become a better writer because of it and I may even continue writing poetry afterward.

I still slip up and have bad poems but that will always happen. Nobody is perfect, not even poets. I am not trying to please anybody with my poetry, I am just writing out poems that I know will help myself.

The moral of this post is to try to find something to alleviate your stress in a safe way because it will be worth it in the end.