At Odyssey, we're proud to spotlight our talented team of response writers. Using our response button feature, they carry on our mission of sparking positive, productive conversations in a polarized world.

Each month, we'll highlight a response writer on our homepage. For April, that writer is Akansha Singh, a sophomore at Rutgers University. She started writing for Odyssey in November, and quickly became one of the platform's top creators! Read on to hear her story.

If you're interested in becoming a response writer, email us! You’ll get to choose your own topics and write one response a week to one of our top trending articles. Your work will be featured on our homepage and in our weekly Overheard on Odyssey newsletter. Plus, for your first 10 articles, you’ll be compensated by HQ at $10/response.

My name is Akansha Singh and I’m a sophomore in college. I’m majoring in Journalism and Media Studies and Economics. I started writing for the Odyssey after learning about it through an email sent by the journalism department in my school. It seemed like a super interesting opportunity to me because I wanted more writing experience. After I showed my interest, I started writing for the Odyssey in November of last year.

Since then, I have been consistently writing a response article a week and loving it. As a Journalism major, I write in my classes and outside of school but I haven’t ever written for an entity like the Odyssey. That is mostly due to how I am able to freely channel my creativity and express myself here that I don’t really have the chance to do elsewhere.

I really enjoy writing for the Odyssey as I have complete creative control and freedom to write about what I want. I get sent a list of articles each week on topics that interest me, and I have creative freedom to write a response article for the subject I choose. Sometimes I agree with the article I’m responding to, other times I like to stray away from the topic and find my own connection in my response.

Overall, it is a very rewarding experience since I get to have my work published on the website and write about subject matters that interest me. Being published is an amazing feeling because I know that people are reading my work and I have an audience, be it small or large. Also, having work to my name is a really nice feeling to have. This opportunity has been really great for me to build upon my writing skills, work on a timeline, explore my interests, and solidify what I like to write about.