I've been writing for Odyssey for a little over a year and a half now. That's around 80 weeks, and I've submitted approximately 1 article per week, so I guess that would make... around 80 articles if I did my math right. I've had a great time writing for this publication, I've just been totally out of place the entire time. Now, let me explain.
My articles don't exactly resemble the typical piece of content seen on this website. My goal was never to extensively ramble about my personal feelings or act like I'm some political authority figure on a topic that I actually know nothing about. Nope, my goal, at least most of the time, is to make people laugh, or at least create a piece of content that hopefully, nobody has seen before.
Instead of writing an open letter to someone I care about, I wrote an open letter to my facial hair. Instead of ranking the five best restaurants near my college, I wrote a ranking about the five best convenience stores. Instead of telling people where they should go to study, I told people where they should go to have their school-induced mental breakdown. You get the idea.
If there's any sort of common element among most of my articles, it's definitely a satirical tone. Sometimes it works great, sometimes not so much, and everything in between. Scrolling through the UA Odyssey feed of all the articles that the community had recently published, it would usually be pretty clear from the title if an article was mine or not. After all, "5 Things That Happen When Your Pet Tiger Suddenly Goes Berserk And Starts Eating All The Neighborhood Dogs" is not exactly something that most people would write.
Still, I am very thankful that Odyssey gave me the opportunity to write this sort of content, and I plan to use my experience here as a stepping stone to my almost impossible dream of someday writing for The Onion or Clickhole, which I know will quite likely never come true, but it's always nice to dream, I think. Then again, who knows? Maybe I will get there one day. Quite possibly not, but you never know.
Due to the vast differences between the majority of my content and practically everything else that Odyssey publishes, I consider myself an out of place Odyssey writer. But, I'm completely and totally okay with that. I'm not sure that anything I've ever written has actually furthered Odyssey's mission, but I'm cool with that as well. I've created a lot of what I consider to be very unique content, for better and for worse. Not necessarily good or bad, but definitely unique.
So thank you Odyssey, thank you for allowing me to write things such as my satirical argument that the best proof we have for the existence of God is the existence of Girl Scout Cookies, and my article talking about how humans could learn several valuable life lessons from mantis shrimp. These, among others, are pieces of content that I am indeed proud of, and they are also probably totally out of place on Odyssey's website, which I love.
Thanks again Odyssey, for allowing me to embrace my strange sense of humor through the content I write for you. I really do love being so, so completely out of place.
