I like to think of myself as a writer.

Gee, I wonder why...

Thankfully, I've found myself in a living-learning community of writers here on campus, with the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program. It's full of amazing artists and truly talented writers. I can not stress this enough; these people are talented.

Some of the people I've befriended are real poets. They have unimaginable ways with words, such that I want to share their writing with the world so much more than I want to share my own. It's THAT GOOD.

My friends and I have bonded over our mutual love of writing and reading poetry and prose. We recognized the importance of sharing our work with each other; so, we created the Dead Poet's Society, inspired by the movie.

It started back in first semester. I joined poetry club in LHSP, and at the end of last semester, we had a poetry reading where I braved the crowd to read a poem aloud. Apparently, it was good. People seemed to like it. But that inspired my friend Hannah to share her poetry and other writing with me.

This act of sharing, we both realized, solidified our writing and made it something much more than just what we did for fun; it became real, something written for other people to read just as much it was for ourselves. This was the turning point.

I had this little folder on Google drive called Writing Worth Memorizing, where I just put random thought poems and things that my friends had shared with me or other writin I had found around the internet for a while now, and I decided to share this with Hannah. We roped another friend, Tyler, into sharing his poetry with us as well, and soon enough we had the begins of a whole folder full of very impressive writing.

Then, after a night of musing and thinking and talking about movies, books, and writing, we decided we were going to call ourselves the Dead Poets' Society, after the movie. But instead of reading dead poets, we would share our own work. We would share our writing with each other in this Google Drive folder, we would comment on it together, we would edit writing and we would watch each other grow as writers.

And I am so thankful for this little impromptu club.

Writing takes on an incredibly different feel and importance in life when you have someone to share it with. It entirely changes your confidence level in writing and makes you feel better and more excited about it. But even more than that, it changes the way you write.

You learn from other writers and their skills and tricks in writing. They inspire you. We each have different writing styles, distinct and individual, but you can also see the growth in styles, the influences that each person has had on each other. But even more than that, writing for this audience changes the way I write. I feel more comfortable taking risks in writing, but I also know that I need to explain myself and my meaning more fully. I can't just jot notes down and except it to make sense anymore.

It's enhanced my writing, made me feel more confident sharing it, and most importantly, it has given me a much-needed outlet for conveying my emotions and thoughts. Here, I can find ways to express myself and my grievances and have other people read it, respond to it, without any fear of judgment.

Friends, I'm so thankful for Dead Poets' Society. I love reading your work and I love sharing my work with you.

I encourage everyone to share their writing in some way, with a small group of friends, with strangers at a reading, anywhere you can! It truly changes how you write and how you feel about your writing, in a more than special way.