s an aspiring writer, I know that producing two papers each week will be invaluable to my development. I have written for friends and family and known the delight of a well-formed sentence from an early age, but it was not until college that I took my own writing very seriously. I have learned to appreciate the connotations and sound qualities of individual words and to notice how those attributes can be used to create subtlety of meaning. Writing an opinion column for the school newspaper has exposed me to the challenge of distilling my own thoughts and observations for the consumption of strangers. I enjoy examining a narrow facet of life and seeing how it reflects upon the greater whole.