As of sometime in February, I have been writing for Odyssey for over a year. It's been about a year and a few weeks now. I just wanted to use this article to talk about my time with Odyssey and why I've liked it and disliked it.
Odyssey has been great to me. For starters, I've got a pretty solid thing to put on a resume, as well as some solid articles I can include in a portfolio. I've grown as a writer. When I started, my writing was immature and not so great. As I've gotten older and I've been writing longer, it's gotten so much more interesting. I feel like I've written a lot of articles that I've enjoyed reading, as well as writing, and that my style has become more me. It's much more individualized, and I'm not worried about what people think anymore. I'm not trying to imitate anyone else's work, it's all my own.
On the other hand, I've written so much that I don't know what to write anymore. I've been writing for so long that I'm out of ideas, and what I do write in those times, is not good. We are given prompts and possible article ideas, but I've become disappointed in myself and the quality of the work I put out. I'd rather have a few great articles than lots of mediocre articles. That's one of the things I dislike about Odyssey. One article a week, due at a specific time. I got into a habit of, if I knew I was busy, pushing out articles ahead of time and getting them done so I could focus on the weeks ahead. This proved to be beneficial, but the articles weren't great and were being written so they could be done by a deadline. They were also being used before they intended to be published. If someone didn't do their work and submit an article, one of mine I had done ahead of time would be used to make the quota, without me being asked if that was okay. Uh, how about no??? Anyways...
If I wrote an article that I wanted to write - with something I had been inspired by - I'd call it a good article. For example, my article about Fredonia. I was extremely proud of this article. I felt inspired to write it, it was about personal experience, and more people read it than some of my other articles. This article specifically had about 1000 page views. One of those articles would be like this one. I wrote this quick. All it is are some links to some videos. Only a few page views - quite literally about 8. No work involved, not interesting, and you'll find hundreds of articles like this on Odyssey. Articles with no substance. I've seen some pretty terrible work come from Odyssey - work that was basically unedited, with terrible grammar and misspellings every few sentences. But, they need an article a week. So...they'll take what they get.
One of the best things about writing for Odyssey is that it has provided a lot of leadership opportunities for me. I have held three different positions working for Odyssey. I've held the position of content creator (what I have been this whole time - a writer), social media director, and community ambassador. Now, content creator and social media director were great. Social media director gave me a chance to help our community expand - through social media. I created a twitter and an Instagram, and it gave me some experience for a resume. Community ambassador was the program I had a problem with.
The first Managing Editor of the Fredonia community reached out to me about it, and I was expected to start a community of Odyssey on my own. I was excited about this prospect and how it would look on a resume, and I claimed the Erie County area. Within a few days, I reached out to hundreds of people, and I was expected to have 15 people within a few weeks - I found this realistic at first, then as the process went along, it wasn't so realistic. Out of all of the people I reached out to, only 3 were interested. People in my area just were not interested, no matter how I phrased it. I had video calls with people who had set up communities successfully - and they explained how they got to this goal. Most of them communicated the need around their school campus and phrased it very specifically. I could not meet this goal, I was home and even after rephrasing my messages, no one responded. I could tell I was disappointing to the upper management, they made it pretty obvious. They kept asking why I wasn't making the goal, and continued to set unrealistic goals for me. The process became more frustrating when they switched my manager without telling me who the next one would be. I didn't hear from anyone for three weeks, after emailing constantly. I had given up and when I wanted to quit, they wouldn't let me. They asked me for another few weeks. When I said I wasn't interested, they asked for one week. I went with the week and when the week was over, I still only had 3 people. I had finally been let go from the stressful reigns of the community ambassador program. Then the next week, the new Managing Editor of the Fredonia community reached out to ask me about the position again!
My ride with Odyssey has definitely been an interesting one. I've grown a lot as a writer and it's helped me mature and get out a lot of stress, but it also caused quite a bit of stress. I'm glad that I did it, but I'm glad that this is my last article.
