Scans showed my grandmother’s cancer like painted stars across her cells, lightly sprinkled. Seeing that was enough of a spark to get me to work 3 summers in a laboratory. I was willing to complete admittedly monotonous tasks, comprised of pipetting, centrifuging, vortexing, copying and purifying DNA, plating cells, and measuring solution. I could be convinced that my efforts were truly for my grandma. But, results would come weeks after experiments and relevant trends could be seen over months. Going...

As I read my adjectives describing a bubbling soda can, I found my own voice begin to fizzle and pop and noticed the stunned silence of my fellow freshmen. To most of the class, the writing assignment was a chance to ramble about a baseball game or TV show, but I used it to flex my descriptive narrative. My English teacher suggested I start a creative writing club. I was hesitant, stuck in a shy freshman mind-set, but proposed the...