Some of My Personal Articles

When you ask someone to think about creative work, your mind is is probably filled with photographers, artists, and graphic designers.

It is easy to forget that “writing” and other non-visual fields do indeed fall under creativity. And as much as I wish I had the talent for drawing or film-making, I could never seem to put my imagination and thoughts onto paper in a way that was satisfying.

I thought my creative dreams were destined to be unfulfilled and I left them to be so throughout my childhood.

However, this all changed when I entered my junior year in high school.

As a result of an amazing English teacher, I discovered my knack for story-telling and writing. The summer after, I decided to try out writing as a hobby and composed 80 sonnets for 80 friends.

Everyone loved it.

Nobody had seen anyone do something like it at all and they were all excited to see what my next poems would look like. The impact of this moment was so drastic that it convinced to to completely ditch a STEM career path and pursue a more design-centric one.

I expanded upon my experience in one of my first articles.

The overwhelming response from these poems proved to me that creativity was not confined to art, but rather was more of a mindset you could apply to multiple pathways.

From that day forward I continued to write and never looked back:

• As I neared the end of high school, I wrote a poem titled “An Ode to Primary Education” as a reflection upon my journey through the American schooling system,
• As I graduated high school, I wrote a letter to my best friend as we parted ways and headed off to college,
• And by far my most popular story was the one I wrote the summer before college. After hating Berkeley for most of my life, I fell in love with it when I got to drive down and visit the campus. I documented this feeling in “I have a Crush on UC Berkeley”.

I have been lucky enough to publish these stories within multiple publications and share my life with thousands of people. It has been quite a journey already, albeit only writing for about 3 years and I am excited for what’s to come.

The last article I will share with you all is one I wrote to my girlfriend as a Valentine’s Day gift. She is my first partner in life and I couldn’t be happier.

Thank you for listening to my story and I hope you got something out of it!

If you want to read more of my articles that were not mentioned in this post, please head over to my Medium profile. For other inquiries, email me at josh_mao@berkeley.edu !