Phoebe Lauren Parker

I was a nine-year-old novelist. No really, I was. Granted, it wasn’t professionally published and my first book was as sophisticated as you can imagine from a child but, nonetheless, I’m proud of my first written fiction piece. My book was called Miss Unpopular and it followed new freshman Phoebe DeYoung navigating her way through high school in a new town. My nine-year-old self nervously detailed all the struggles that I believed entering high school would bring. And eight years later, here I am. My seventeen-year-old, incoming college freshman self, staring at my laptop smiling at something I wrote that still managed to completely encapsulate all of the anxiety that I currently felt.

Writing has always been one of the single most important things in my life and the only thing that has managed to bring me solace during my angst-filled adolescence. All the feelings churning inside of me were practically a one-woman play, and writing gave me a way to express those thoughts. And it still does. As cliche as it might seem, for me, writing serves as a way to convey all parts of myself, from the vulnerability that I try to hide to my tireless ambition to be better than I was yesterday, no matter how intense my ambition may seem to...