As the summer began, I realized that I was approaching my one year Odyssey anniversary. I originally decided to begin writing as a way to get connected with a community at Emory before stepping foot on campus as a student. I also just wanted a platform to share thoughts and anecdotes with friends, family, and frankly anyone else who bothered to read what I was writing.

After a year of school, my biweekly posts have become so much more. I have always loved writing, especially in high school. I was regularly writing in my English class, writing poems in my free time, and creating the school literary magazine. Once I got to college, I had exempted out of the freshman writing course and jumped straight into my core classes for my major. Unfortunately due to my packed schedule this meant no English or writing classes. My entire first year of college I wrote a total of three papers. I have no idea how but that was just the way the cookie crumbled.

The way I was prepared in high school made me feel like I should be writing a paper a night. That is how everyone made college look like. My Odyssey articles became not only an outlet but also like stretching. It seems like a strange way to think of it, but I really can't imagine going a year without writing to express my thoughts. When you are stretching you are flushing out the stress of that day, allowing your body to process the tension and tightness that has been built up. While it is doing that it is also remembering the work done before and adding flexibility to what it already knows.

Writing Odyssey articles also helped expand my writing to journalling and just writing down different thoughts. While some of these things were never published, scribbling down 250 words just to clear my head is always helpfully and is something I will make sure I continue doing.

Continuing to write has also helped improve my communication skills. I have always been better at articulating ideas on paper better than in words. I have found though, with the increase in my writing, expressing my ideas verbally has become more fluid. I have no idea why, but the connection that I have made is with the deadlines for my writing I usually sit down and knock out an article in one sitting and then edit later. This parallels to verbal communication because when speaking don't get to backspace and start over a few times. The words you chose are spoken and then you don't get to take them back.

I am so thankful for the opportunity to write my articles. Here is to (at least) another year of article writing, thought processing, and fun college anecdotes!