Perhaps my senior year is the cause of a new-found motivation.

Or perhaps it is the particular outlets I have chosen to explore that have led me to a new-found motivation.

Regardless, I have been able to reach inside and find another part of me, one I never knew existed.

Thanks, Creative Writing: Poetry.

My entire life I have been immersed in reporting or feature writing, prose, if you will. From a young age I knew I wanted to be a world-famous sports reporter.

Any other form of writing — poetry especially — just seemed wrong. Ignorant, I know.

I viewed poetry as saying something, but meaning the exact opposite, a way to not say what you want to say by not saying it. Does that make any sense? No? Great. Because that is how much sense poetry made to me. Maybe we are on the same page of how uncomfortable it was for me.

Nevertheless, I took the course, knowing my unfamiliarity with that form of writing and knowing how disinterested I can become when something is too far out of my comfort zone.

However, 11 weeks in the class and I was wrong in 1,001 ways. Instead of listing each way, I will just say what poetry means now: the exalted, expressive, elevated use of words which represent a meaning found beyond words on paper.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet during the late early 1800s, said poetry is “the best words in the best order.” Perfect.                              

My new-found desire for poetry has led to not only me progressing into a better writer, but to discovering a new, deeper part of me.

So now, I am here to say, do not wait until the last semester of the last year in your college career (it’s the poet in me making me rhyme there) to explore any foreign avenues.

As cliché as it sounds, college is about finding yourself, maturing into who you will become. So take advantage of that.

I could never see myself reading or writing poetry before, and now I could never see myself without at least reading or writing a piece weekly.

Don’t be hesitant to venture into something that seems so unknown that it scares you.

Stretch your comfort zone.

And poetry does not necessarily have to be your new venture.

Socialize if you are typically introverted.

Leave the state if you have never seen outside of central Illinois.

Learn a new language if you only speak English.

Do something different every damn day. See who you become.

You will not regret it.

Anthony Catezone is a senior journalism major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or DENopinions@gmail.com. If three emails are received in reply to this column, he will print one of his poems.