Hi! My name is Samantha May and I am not a writer. I am far from shy, I love meeting new people and I am incredibly sarcastic. When I was first approached by someone from the Odyssey community on writing weekly articles, I really wanted to get involved but I was not confident in my writing skills whatsoever. Around 1:30 AM one night/morning I was feeling really inspired and decided to fill out my application and contact the same person from a month or two prior. Now understanding how this all works I don't know why I didn't start sooner! Anyways, here I am going to give it a go.

I am currently attending The Art Institute of Pittsburgh for my Associates degree in Graphic design. I've always been creative since my early childhood, whenever asked "what do you want to be when you grow up?", I always replied with " I want to be an artist." When I was a child I never really knew what being an 'artist' entailed, I just knew I wanted to be one. I was always around technology growing up because of my dad, he was always working with computer software so we always had more than one computer in the 'computer room' (remember calling it the computer room? lol #90's #00's). Fast forward 20 years and here I am pursuing my love of art through something I can make a career out of using technology, funny how things work out.

So how did I end up in Pittsburgh? I am originally from from a smaller town in North East Ohio called Chesterland, or otherwise referred to as Chestertucky. Chester township is about 15 minutes away from every other town and about 30 minutes away from Lake Erie, but for some reason majority of people there claim to be 'country' , love 'southern girls/boys' and are essentially poser hicks. Now don't get me wrong I grew up with my grandma riding horses and strapping on a saddle starting at six years old, i've helped bail hay on a 90 degree day and have scooped my fair share of manure. What my biggest issue is that majority of the people preaching to everyone and their brother that they're 'country' is because most of the time they're not. Just because when summer comes around and Blossom starts selling Mega tickets for their country concert package, everyone breaks out their $100 untouched boots, and daisy dukes. I'm not hating on anyone, I like country music and usually have the mentality of 'you just do you' , but in a fairly average town that is flooded in trucks with confederate flags with people screaming " YEE YEE.." I was over it.

I wanted to go somewhere completely different than where I grew up, I needed a change. I had always loved New York city, every part of it, but NYC was not only too far away for school, It was too unrealistic in many ways to just run away and go there for numerous reasons. I needed to take baby steps, eventually my Junior year I was in my technical program a representative came from the institute. That following summer I visited the school with mom and aunt and fell in love with it. My third day of senior year I got my acceptance letter into the school and now here I am. I graduate at the end of September (actually 51 days but who's counting) and I can honestly say my experience here has been crazy to say the least. I've grown in so many ways, I've met some amazing (and not so amazing) people along the way and although I am terrified to be done with college at only 20 years old, I am ready. But in the mean time I am just taking it all in day by day and making the most out of what little time I have remaining here. So now that I've given some insight on myself and how I got here, I am really looking forward to continue sharing my ideas and experiences through the Odyssey!

To those reading, Thank you!

Until next time,

-Samantha