When I first started writing as a content creator for Oydssey, I just thought I would sit down, write an article once a week, share it, and repeat it all week after week. However, when I became EIC, I learned that there was a lot more to Odyssey than that.

Odyssey is more than just writing. It’s more than just sharing. The most important thing I have learned as EIC is that Odyssey is a team. It’s a community. That’s become my favorite part of it, which sounds crazy because anyone who knows me knows how much I love to write.

When I became EIC, I had to really focus on establishing the community aspect of my team and onboarding people onto our team as well. As I started getting more people in our community at Stritch, I got more and more excited because my creators were excited as well. My team was dedicated and they wrote weekly and rarely did I have any issues with people not submitting on time.

My team wants to write for Odyssey and they believe in Odyssey and its mission to let millennials speak their minds and share their opinions. As an EIC, that makes me so happy and it makes me want to try harder and harder every day to help my team succeed, because they deserve to. They work hard for me, so I work hard for them.

As my team grows, so does our success. A creator I onboarded told me before she joined the team that she wasn’t a “good writer.” I explained to her that it didn’t matter and that her content would still be good as long as she tried. The next three weeks she had the top shared article on our team. Needless to say, I was a proud EIC.

About a month later, I onboarded two new creators, both of whom were incoming freshman. One of them had their very first article, “A Open Letter To Mi Gente” published in the Odyssey weekly newsletter that is emailed to everyone who works, edits, and writes for Odyssey. It was only his first article. That is definitely one hell of an accomplishment. But it gets better because the next week, we had another article in the newsletter.

Week after week, my team submits stellar content because they are passionate about Odyssey. They want to share their thoughts and have their voices heard. Odyssey is an incredible opportunity and my team is taking advantage of that opportunity and they are doing an incredible job.

Every week as I edit, I smile because the content is interesting but it’s all so different. My team is diverse, which I absolutely love. We are all different and all have different stories but at the end of the day, we all write for Odyssey and we all want our individual voices heard which is why we are part of this amazing company.

I cannot thank my team at Stritch, especially my Contributing Editor and Community Health Manager, along with everyone for making this experience such an incredible one and being such amazing team members and people in general. I couldn’t have asked for better people to have on our team because all of you are truly amazing.