For as long as I can remember, I've been writing novels in my head. It started as a game but eventually became the primary means through which I digested my feelings about life (something that seems painfully obvious when I read back through the bits and pieces that made it onto the page during my high school years).

All the same, even though I love the process of putting my thoughts into prose, I have procrastinated composing a legitimate story for years. I tell myself that I need to finish my schoolwork first, or, when I have a momentary break, I feel too drained to pen anything coherent. Wait until you're inspired, I tell myself, even though I know I've been inspired for quite a while.

Like many students across the country, I was sent home from college last week due to fears concerning COVID-19. Now all of my in-person classes have been officially canceled for the rest of the semester. I felt that I should be disappointed about the experiences I'll be missing out on, outraged that we're being funneled into online instruction platforms for courses that would be better taught in-person, fearful for those whose livelihoods are threatened by the virus - and yet, the crisis still fails to elicit feelings from me of the magnitude I feel it deserves. As the situation grows increasingly fraught around the world, I find that I am once again turning to the written word to both soothe and analyze my complicated emotional response.

As I prepared to write this post, I thought, When I volunteered to participate in Odyssey, I told myself I was going to use it as a way to force myself to finally start laying out the groundwork for my novel. And though I was tempted to churn out another meaningless entry about COVID-19 and online classes or elucidate an obscure microbiology topic for the umpteenth time, I realized that I was denying myself an important opportunity. With nothing meaningful to complete in the next few weeks aside from homework, I could finally begin laboring on the narrative I'd been playing with for years.

In the coming weeks, I hope to document my journey on this site. There may still be some "filler" articles here and there, but I want to dedicate more of my energy to something I'm truly passionate about (in addition to microbiology, of course!) I encourage any other students who are fortunate enough to be grappling with an enormous amount of free time (rather than the severe economic implications of the virus) to think not of what you're missing out on by being exiled from campus this semester, but rather the opportunities these circumstances may provide you to pursue what you love.