Writing is one of the earliest activities I recall doing in school. As a first grader over a decade ago, I remember grasping a narrow wooden pencil in my hands, haphazardly scribbling words on a lined sheet of paper. 

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The moment when writing truly became a core part of my life was at the beginning of high school. I started ninth grade as a quiet, introverted student. Halfway through my freshman year, I got the opportunity to join my high school newspaper, the Hawkeye.

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I vividly remember the first day I walked into the newsroom as a guest writer. I was one of only three freshmen on staff, and the older juniors and seniors towered over me. In spite of my inexperience with journalism and young age, my editors and our newspaper adviser pushed me to become a seasoned writer. Before long, I found myself running down the long corridors of our school, attending sporting events and plays, and interviewing students and faculty to get the story. Afterward, I sat for hours in my bedroom, carefully assembling the quotations my sources provided into a polished news article.

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At first, I found being a journalist hard. Most people would have considered me shy at the time, and I sometimes found it difficult to approach the sources I was interviewing. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure how to make my news stories flow properly. But with time, I overcame these initial challenges.

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In retrospect, my experiences on the Hawkeye proved to be some of the most transformative of my lifetime. As I progressed through my four years as a high schooler, I rose through the ranks on the newspaper and took on more responsibility. By the time my senior year began, I was working as the Editor-in-Chief. On the surface, the Hawkeye taught me how to write; I was drilled time and again on the inner workings of what it means to be a strong writer. But the experience did so much more than merely improve my writing skills. It taught me the power of storytelling and the hidden potential embedded in even the most basic of stories.

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Ever since I first began telling stories through my own words in high school, I have been intrigued by how combinations of 26 letters from the English alphabet can combine to form words, which combine to form paragraphs and, ultimately, ideas. This is precisely why I write.

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Unlike spoken words in everyday life, telling stories on a piece of paper is a practice that has become second nature to me. When I sit down to write, I am guided by nothing except for the thoughts in my brain. I see nothing but the page in front of me, and hear nothing but the sounds of typing on my computer or the crinkling of paper. In the end, writing is a medium through which I can tell a story freely; the possibilities are limitless.

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Sometimes, the stories I tell in my writing are journalistic. This was the case on the Hawkeye, and continues to be the case in my work on the University of Michigan’s student-run newspaper, The Michigan Daily. Other times, they are academic stories about historical events or wars that transpired thousands of years ago. Or they may be personal narratives like this story on these pages.

 

Before I truly grasped the great power of writing, my life experiences taught me that a story could only be found in a poem, short story, or novel. These forms of writing certainly contain some of the most remarkable stories ever known to humankind, as I learned in a creative writing course last semester. But my experiences in the last several years have demonstrated that every form of writing truly tells a memorable, meaningful story. For millennia, people have clung to writing as a means of transcending time and place and becoming immersed in a new world that would otherwise be inaccessible.

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Ultimately, I write to explore the stories that matter to my community and the world. I write to delve deep into mysterious realms and illuminate the peoples and stories that are unilluminated. I write to carry on the tradition of storytelling that has gone on for thousands of years before me; by doing so, I write to change the world for all.