Emily Schario

During my senior year of high school, I took a course called Syracuse University Project Advance (SUPA). The program included a writing-intensive course that is required for all first-year students at Syracuse as well as a challenging critical theory course discussing narratives of culture. For someone who was accustomed to writing five-paragraph essays structured around a simplistic thesis, I was overwhelmed with the tasks of unpacking dense, theoretical readings such as Michel Foucault’s “Panopticism” from Discipline and Punishment and Louis Althusser’s Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Homework readings that once took me a maximum of thirty minutes were now taking hours and leaving me wondering, “What did I just read?” Although this course was incredibly difficult, throughout my journey, I realized that not only did I have a knack for writing, but I absolutely loved it. Whether I was writing five page essays on the ideological state apparatuses displayed in the movie Frozen, or doing quick thinking papers where I had to wrap my head around a political or social issue within one thousand words, I never felt like I was doing work. Now that I’m in college, I am following this newfound passion of mine by double majoring in Communications and Interdisciplinary English/Creative Writing. My favorite thing about my major is that it gives me the flexibility to express myself creatively, which is something that I highly value. A dream of mine would be to write for BuzzFeed or Saturday Night Live. I love communicating my ideas and thoughts with others, and hope that writing for the Odyssey will be the perfect outlet to expand my creative expression.