The Leap
Getting a 15 year old to write on Medium.
I read Medium everyday. Ranging from “How I Learned to Code” to “31 Things I’d Have Told Myself Before College”, I have always found amusing, inspiring, or even life changing stories here on Medium. They make my everyday life just a tad bit more interesting.
For this very reason I was scared, terrified really, when I received an email from Medium that said, “We’d like to invite you to write on Medium.” This was back in the 28th of May, the early days of Medium, when only a small percentage of people could write. At the time Medium was starting to expand, it was rolling out invites to anybody (everybody) in its user base. When I opened that email and read its contents I couldn't help but be a little anxious about what was happening.
Why are they letting anybody, including myself, a 15 year old boy, write on Medium? That’s the question that daunted me. “It’s not supposed to be this way, only real writers are supposed to be writing this stuff.” I said to myself. Who was I, a 15 year old boy whose first language isn't even English, the one who got an 89% in the first semester of both Freshman and Sophomore year English class, the same one who got a pitiful 54 Writing on the PSAT that year, to be writing on Medium?
Towards the end of that email appeared a small blurb that got my attention, it said, “ We love a critique: Medium welcomes feedback on your experience. You can send all gripes, problems, and suggestions to yourfriends@medium.com.”. The very next day I built up the courage to do exactly that, I emailed them with my gripes, problems, and suggestions.
Dear Medium,
I just wanted to give my two cents on this awe inspiring experiment you
guys call medium.com. Let me just start of by saying that I completely
LOVE IT. I truly believe that Medium has accomplished what it set out to do,
provide high quality community created content, or at least that is what my
storyfeed tells me. Every story I read teaches me something interesting,
spurs up a debate inside myself, or gives something to childishly giggle
about. It’s been a long time since a publishing or social network has had
the ability to do all three. This can be hands down attributed to better content by amazing authors. Oh, and I can’t forget to give credit to the developers that created the user interface that gives the stories justice.
Enough of the flattering. Other than intriguing your motivation, I wanted
to comment on what I aspire Medium will grow to be. As of right now, I
believe that being discriminatory about who can write articles and what
gets promoted works very well, and I cannot help to question what is the
path Medium is taking to scale the project without loosing the quality of
what is fed to a users feed. I would really hate to see the quality of the
pieces that I see in my feed degrade, as I see very often in other
publishing sites that go from niche to mainstream. I just received an email
giving me the update that I can now write and publish on Medium, and I sit
in wonderment because I by no means am an experienced or qualified writer,
heck I’m 15 years old and the only thing I can write well is code. I really
do hope that your great development team can be able to scale, grow, and
yet not loose the quality of the content you are able to provide.Obviously,
Medium is starting to let other users publish without being selective, so I
will stand in patience and see where this path that Medium has chosen to take will
lead it. Addressing my opinion on what I want Medium to grow to be, I
really can’t say. I love the idea, I love what it is right now, and I love
being able to sit here and watch Medium develop without really knowing what
it is developing into.
Sincerely,
Nick
Three days later, Luke, a member of the Medium support team, gave me a very short but meaningful response shown above. At the time I didn’t put much thought or importance to what Luke said. I thought that eventually there would be numerous other teenagers who were more qualified to write who would take on the role of providing the perspective of a young(er) generation, so I just disregarded the message and never looked back, until today, December 31st, 2013.
This morning I was looking through my old ‘Weekly update’ messages from Medium to examine some of the messages I’d never opened. Towards the end of the list I saw the message from Luke and it reminded me of the heart-felt letter that I sent and all the concerns that laid in it. Out of curiosity I went back and reread that letter. In retrospect, I realized that I loved what Medium developed into over the last 6 months and that my concerns, though justified at the time, were nothing more than just that, concerns. To this day, the quality of the content I’m being fed hasn't degraded, instead, it has gotten better and more diversified than it ever would have been with a constricted writer base.
I smiled and went on with my day; however, something bugged me but I couldn't single it out. I didn't realize it until just an hour ago, but my conjecture, the one about some 15 year old stepping up and writing on Medium to give that perspective that Luke had talked about, was partially true. A young(er) writer base did form, and a collection was even created for that exact purpose, but the probability of anybody other than the collection’s followers to see the stories is slim. Even though Medium has become more diversified when it expanded its writing base to everyone, the young(er) writer base is still struggling to appear in a regular member’s news-feed. In my news-feed, before I found the collection, I saw stories from people with many different backgrounds, but I never came across a post from a teenager, from an author who talked about the world from my perspective. I never saw posts about how the author failed his or her SATs because the universe decided to go haywire the day before the test, or how the author got a B in that class because the teacher is a little bit on the crazy side. I don’t even see posts about the homecoming dance the author did or didn't go to. Even less likely to be on my news-feed is the story about how the author was profoundly changed by a summer camp, a math team competition, a swimming meet, or even a volunteer experience at the local zoo that he or she went to.
Luke was right, the perspective of a 15 year old is interesting. Actually, I revise his statement, the perspective of a 15 year old is necessary. That’s why I decided to say:
Yes, Medium, I accept your invitation to write.
I’m really 16 now, but I think the effort still counts. Coincidence or not, I’m writing this in New Years Eve, so I figured that it is only adequate for my resolution for this year be to become an active writer here on Medium. I encourage other teenagers who see this story to take the leap with me and do the same and submit their articles to this collection. If you agree with Luke and think Medium should have a stronger young writer base, please recommend this story, so that other teens may see it, and follow the collection.
@Luke — thank you. Also, I didn't know what a twitter handle was until just now, so sorry about not responding to your email. My handle is @NickGome and I realize that I should probably start using twitter more (or at all); I'll make that another resolution of mine for the year.
Note: I decided I wanted to publish this January 1st to start off the new year, so I didn’t have much time to revise this post. If you spot any mistakes please point them out.
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