I've been a writer and the Editor-in-Chief of my branch of Odyssey since the beginning of January 2016. I was absolutely ecstatic to be bringing Odyssey to my college and start this new journey that I honestly never thought I'd get the opportunity to have as a sophomore in undergrad. I expected it to be hard. I expected it to be stressful and overwhelming at times. I expected it to be a way for me to be able to write on a regular basis and get some of my writing out there — I'm an English major with an emphasis in writing. I need all of the experience I can get. What I didn't expect was the amount of hate and negativity that would come with trying to start a team of writers at my school as well as the hate that has persisted during my 5 months with Odyssey.

I'm not naive enough to believe that Odyssey would never face any sort of ridicule or negativity, because this is the internet after all, but I am still astounded to this day at the level of passionate hate that is directed toward this platform. My answer to the haters, however, is that you can't possibly hate something so much when you haven't even begun or tried to understand everything that it incorporates. Hating Odyssey because you've stumbled across a couple poorly written articles and outwardly hating on them through social media behind a computer screen is the equivalent of me seeking out ways to hate on things that people are passionate about when I don't share those passions — I couldn't possibly understand why it is that it's important to someone else. And I shouldn't question that due to my utter ignorance of that particular system.

So to all of you ignorant haters out there that think you're "so funny" for hating on the work and ambitions of your peers, here's what I have to say to you: Your ignorance makes me incredibly frustrated at times, but also makes me laugh hysterically at your sheer laziness to not research us further. Let me enlighten you a little bit.

Odyssey is a news source that is specifically geared toward the minds of the adolescent generations. We're writing articles every week to try to give you a couple minutes of light entertainment reading while you're scrolling through your Facebook feed on the bus or while you're procrastinating on homework. It's informal and a lot of times people correlate that to being unprofessional, but what you don't understand is that we're not trying to write articles for "The New York Times." If you think you can write better articles than us, then why don't you apply for it and prove me wrong? Don't hate on something you wouldn't be able to do yourself. And the best part is that if you don't want to write for it, you can very easily just scroll past the articles you don't wish to read that pop up on your Facebook feed. Really, it's not that hard.

Next, Odyssey is a way for college students to write every week and be published. For those of you who are neither an English major or a writer on your own time, I don't think you understand how incredibly difficult it is to have this opportunity. I have submitted a variety of my work — in multiple genres — to so many different literary platforms and have never even received a response of declination. I still haven't heard from them, let alone get some of my writing published. So to have an opportunity like Odyssey under my belt when I'll be going into the workforce is huge.

Along with that, every person that writes for the Odyssey is under the watchful eye of a managing editor that is located at Odyssey's base in New York City (shoutout to my editor, Jamie). That means that every single person's article is edited and reviewed by a managing editor (and a copy editor) every. single. week. So we're not only given an opportunity to write and be published every single week, but we also get to work with professionals in the field. I also have had the privilege of working with two different editors, and my first one has been a fantastic resource in learning which grad schools I could be interested in applying for. I still have a solid enough relationship where I could ask her plenty of other questions about where I should go as I try to dip my toes in the adult world and it's so helpful (shoutout to Irene). Not a bad gig to have a professional relationship and connection with someone in the field I'm looking to pursue as I try to figure out the next few years of my life, am I right?

Next, which I probably should have mentioned sooner, every person that you see writing articles for Odyssey has an internship with the company that can go on their résumé. Now I know every single person reading this article knows the absolute struggle of how difficult and unfair the realm of "internships" can be. Companies always want college students with five years of experience, which is impossible, so just the fact alone that this opportunity can count for something like that is so important. Writers for the Odyssey can explain the depth of their position while adding having worked with an actual editor, and coming up with their own content each week.

Lastly, to the people out there that just refuse to look at Odyssey with a positive lens, please don't invalidate the work that we're putting into this site. We write articles every single week and believe it or not, we're human just like you. We all have completely sh*tty weeks and we're still expected to write a decent article to be published. We have to write articles when we have midterms or finals, tech week if we're in a theater production or a music ensemble on campus. Not everything we write is going to be absolutely incredible and that's fine. Don't discredit the work we have done because we have spent hours upon hours writing for this platform. This is my 18th article for Odyssey. I absolutely adore writing for this each week on top of my other responsibilities as the EIC. I'm defensive and protective over my writers because they are all incredible writers and they don't deserve the heat that Odyssey receives a lot of the time.

Odyssey gives students an opportunity to write and be published each week even if they're not English majors specifically. Writing is a passion that a lot of people hold and it's amazing for me to be able to offer my peers in other departments a chance to express themselves through writing. They don't get that opportunity anywhere else.

Writing for Odyssey has changed my life. It's helped me to decide a career path I want to pursue officially, and it gives me a chance to write every week that isn't writing an analytical paper for my literature courses. I will be forever grateful for what Odyssey has given me a chance to do. It's so important to me, and it's very important to thousands of other people (not exaggerating) so don't knock it down if you don't fully understand everything that it incorporates. It's not cute. It's not funny. Just stop.