I'm going to try an exercise when I just type for 10 minutes with a stream of consciousness. I've always felt that I try to be too precise with words and start to overthink what I want to write. As a result, my message gets convoluted and get caught up in the details of what I'm trying to say. Writing has always been something I enjoyed even though I rarely take the time to hone this skill. I still remember an essay we had to write senior year of high school in Mrs. Barbarics' class. I made an observation about a piece we had to read and she called it out for the class to discuss. The exact details of what we talked about has been forgotten, but she and the class applauded me for the critique and analysis and that has always stayed with me.

Writing is a powerful tool to convey your message and story and I highly respect the writers at the Economist and some of my favorite authors. The Economist itself has a witty tone of humor that has a bias towards a certain goal - I think periodicals shouldn't always get caught up in trying to be objective.

My favorite author is the one that made me start to enjoy reading - Michael Crichton. The first novel I read was in 4th grade when my mom randomly bought me The Lost World. It gave me my first glimpse of where a good book can take you. I've always loved dinosaurs and it gave me my first opportunity to be in the same world as them. Afterwards, I voraciously read as many Crichton books as I could. Sphere is my second favorite of his works and to me it was the first science fiction psychological thriller that I read. Afterwards, I remember being really interested in trying to understand where he got his inspiration from. I read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World and was pretty disappointed in it. It's just a different type of interest from when that book was written.