At this point in time I believe all colleges are done for the school year and most high schools are less than a month out from being over, so the question remains why I willingly accept a deadline to write for this website after a school year of assignments and tests? Most students come to summer break relieved they will not have to worry about any kind of assessment or anything to write for the next few months, but I am still staying with it. The point is that I am not paid at all for what I write, this is completely self imposed because I want to be here. And I want to be here really one reason, to keep my writing skills sharp over the course of my time at college.
Students view deadlines as this impending thing that could either mark their improvement in class or exactly when they can expect their grade to decline because of a late entry. But they really are at least one effective way to get students to do their homework, and they serve a different connotation when it comes to writing. The weekly deadlines to post on the Odyssey serve as way to always write at least one thing every week, no matter what was going on or how I was feeling, I can end the week knowing that at the very least I wrote something. This kind of consistency and repetition is what I’ve seen from other great writers and how they always turn their work into the quality that it is. No matter the mood or the time or any other factors they are always writing.
I’m not trying to write a novel or use the Odyssey as a why to keep myself moving towards that, but from what I can tell writing always needs to worked on and moved through, especially by your own willpower if necessary. Writing well and conveying yourself clearly is an essential part to most things in life, especially jobs, and being able to practice in an environment like this and also hopefully share some new ideas with whomever reads this, is something worth doing in my book. I’ve had moments where I didn’t pick up a pen at all over the summer and when I start school back in September I had some trouble just getting the words down on paper. I was out of practice and I couldn’t do a basic activity because of that. So these deadlines are my weekly reminders, even if I am on vacation.
