I remember the sticky residue that my Elmer’s Glue Stick left on my stubby fingers as I assembled my first book. Page by page, day after day, I skipped fourth-grade recess and sat alone, tirelessly working on my future bestseller. My obsession grew. I devoured books, skipping lunch to immerse myself in different, altogether more interesting worlds. I tore through books under my desk in math class, at the dinner table, and in the car. In place of my siblings, I spent my afternoons conversing with Harry Potter and running alongside Katniss Everdeen. My parents, avid readers themselves, fueled my addiction happily. They opened their capacious collections to me, no library card required. Today Elmer’s glue and Madeline Miller have given way to voracious reading and writing– I wolf down books and cough up words, watching them form endless strings of sentences on the page. At school, I run our literary arts magazine, Blue Review, take additional AP Literature classes, and tutor my peers. I don’t do all of these things just because I want to, I do them because I have to write. Writing is a compulsion for me–whether I am editing submissions to Blue Review, writing a Spanish essay, a Biology report, or a historical analysis, some part of me has to write.