The girl in that all-the-rage-in-the-00s poncho beaming in front of her third-grade class had no idea where her passion for writing would one day take her. She couldn't have imagined that strangers from all corners of the earth would interact with her words on some futuristic platform called "Instagram". She couldn't have predicted the sobs that would rack her body, the ones that drove her to write an editorial piece on a devastating shooting in her city. And she never dreamed that her little hobby would get her catapult-launched off a moving aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean.

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On March 25th, 2005, the only thing this bright-eyed, bespectacled little girl knew for certain was that she loved to write. Mostly because it got her picture in the local newspaper.