Not to brag or anything, but the journals that I kept from 2007-2012 probably would’ve gotten me famous. Journaling is incredibly versatile; you can write about the reasons that you believe Chick-Fil A should be on the SUNY Geneseo campus or about a research study you did on television usage. The possibilities are endless. The use of Atom changed the way I think about journaling. It is a code text editor, and it has the ability to display your workings in a unique fashion. The text editor part alone makes my heart skip a beat, so everything else is just an added bonus. Atom puts the markdown style text that you are working on, side by side with the finished piece. Mind blowing. You can see your work progress, but it also appears in a final form. Atom also organizes your work for you, and I feel as if my life has been changed, ever since I sorted my blog posts by date. When I’m writing, I tend to be slightly disorganized, so I appreciate the organizational capabilities that Atom possesses. But most importantly, Atom has rekindled my creative side, and it has inspired me to resurrect my love for journaling.
Consider your time in preschool, elementary school, and middle school. Arts and crafts were intertwined with learning, and soon enough art and design classes became mandated. It was important to have writing and reading workshops and to discuss and share your work with others. Student work was hung all around the hallways; inspiring more kids to use their imagination. Creativity was praised and highly encouraged for almost 11 years. It is most definitely a center of the majority of my earliest memories. I don’t often think back to the math problems or the second language exercises during these years, but I am often reminded of the short story I wrote about bats, or the flower I painted that was inspired by Georgia O’Keefe.
My parents always told me that if I picked a career I loved, I would never have to work a day in my life. Let’s face it, who actually wants to work at all? It would make it slightly easier to have a job that I valued and cared about, though. I was the only kindergartener who chose to write inside instead of going out to recess, so it was pretty natural that I decided I wanted to be a writer. I’ve always considered writing to be a creative outlet for me, and this still remains the same. It has always been important for me to carve out the time to write, no matter how jam-packed my schedule is or how stressed I am. But then I got to high school. “You could really do something better with your life.” “Why would you want to major in English? You can do it on the side.” “Would you ever consider a S.T.E.M. major?” These quotes still float around my head today, when I think back to the distaste of my high school peers and teachers when I told them that I wanted to be an English major. At some point during my freshman year, I decided that I had enough, and what high schooler wouldn’t fall into the trap of peer pressure? I worked really hard in the sciences for the next three years and applied to all my colleges as a Biology major. Funny story, I actually only got rejected from 1 out of 11 Biology programs. Oh, how the tables have turned. This statistic really pleased everyone. My teachers and even some of my friends seemed to be more ecstatic that I was going to have a ‘good’ major, rather than one that made me happy. I couldn’t change my teachers, but clearly, I needed some new friends. To go the extra mile, I decided to go on the Pre-Med track, just to please everyone a little bit more. So there I was, registering and enrolling at SUNY Geneseo in June 2018 on a Pre-Med track. After reading an article that said it’s easier to get accepted into medical school with a major other than Biology, I decided that I would be an English major. Without exaggeration, I can say that majoring in English was one of the best decisions of my life (I love Digital Humanities the most, though). I continually talk about Digital Humanities and the assignments that we have, and I also discuss James Gleick’s The Information and the Walden map project far too much. Atom has forced me to journal again and I could not be more thankful to have enrolled in a class that pushes me to think outside the box and to use my imagination.