I've always been reserved when it came to showing people my writing; I was afraid that my writing wouldn't be seen as "intelligent" because I felt I couldn't articulate what I truly wanted to say. I spent my whole school career hiding my writing from the people around me because I was afraid of being judged for my writing or my style of writing. So before I got to George Washington you could say I had a really bad writing insecurity and couldn't fathom the idea of putting my writing on a platform for people to read voluntarily.
I remember I was in University of Writing and before our class started for the day, Professor Marcus introduced one of her previous students who was a part of Odyssey. I had no idea what Odyssey was before the presentation but after hearing what it was all about I knew I had to do it, but there was one problem I didn't want others to read my writing. So when it was time to sign up to join I didn't because I was scared that my writing wouldn't be good enough for such a big platform.
So the weekend came around and I spent it contemplating if I should join Odyssey or not, I finally realized that I couldn't spend the rest of my life hiding my ideas or fearing what people would think of my writing style or what I wrote about. I couldn't live knowing that I passed up such an opportunity to express myself on such a platform, so I emailed my professor and asked her to give me information on how to join and I did.
When it was time for me to write my first article I knew exactly what it was going to be about but I felt as though it wasn't major enough because I wrote about "Black Panther." But I remembered that I had so many ideas and this was only one of many ideas I had, I remember submitting my article the day of my birthday and I was really excited that I was getting over my fear with my new age. But that excitement didn't last for long because the fear of people not liking my writing or the style of it.
The day my article posted I was so nervous to post it because I didn't want any negative feedback but I realized that that was a part of being a writer, so I uploaded them and the positive feedback started coming in. People were sharing my work and giving me endless compliments and I was relieved that people enjoyed my writing.
At the end of the day if you want to try something new, do it! I can't imagine not signing up for Odyssey now because it has helped me tremendously and helped me with my writing. And for that, I will be forever grateful because this showed me that I have to do things I'm not comfortable because the results are beneficial, so go out and take healthy risks.
