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Hailey Decker, new editor-in-chief
of the Odyssey Online at Trinity
Photo by Samantha Luzader
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Hailey Decker, a first year student at Trinity from Grapevine, Texas, right outside of Dallas, exudes a confidence and self-assurance that one rarely finds in an 18 year old.
After graduating from high school a year early, Decker started at Trinity when she was only 17. Within a year of her college life, she has already accomplished a lot.
Decker is the current editor-in-chief of the Trinity division of the Odyssey Online, a national media platform where college students all over the country can write about a wide range of topics from politics, pop culture to college life.
Every week, over 15,000 college students write and publish articles for the Odyssey, which are then shared across various social media platforms.
Each university that chooses to participate in the Odyssey has their own community of writers. Trinity University is one of the participating colleges. Decker started writing for the Odyssey Online back in August when she first came to Trinity.
Unlike most incoming first-year students, Decker was already familiar with the Odyssey Online and knew that she wanted to be a part of it.
She first heard about the Odyssey from a boy she had dated in high school, who was two years older and got involved with the Odyssey when he went to college.
“He told me about it because he knew I was a writer,” Decker recalls and remembers thinking at the time, “OK, so once I go to college I guess I’m going to do this.”
Decker has written articles covering topics from mental health to the debate over whether tattoos should be discriminated against in the work place. The article she is most proud of, “An Open Letter to the Girl I Used to Be,” is an encouraging letter to her high school self about how much better things will get. This article has received 464 reads and 31 shares.
About a month ago, Decker’s former editor-in-chief, sophomore Hannah-Elyse Konyecsni, decided to step down and asked Decker if she would be interested in taking over. Decker was surprised and flattered to be asked as a first-year, but was thrilled to take the opportunity. “That’s kind of how it all just fell into place for me and it’s really been great ever since,” she said.
Now, Decker spends about four to five hours a week writing and editing articles for the Trinity Odyssey community.
It is not that surprising that this freshman became the chief editor of the website, considering that Decker started writing when she was about 10. She says writing was “a way for me to say the things I never really got to say for real. I could say them and even if nobody was reading, they would be out there.”
Decker is very open about her experience with anxiety and depression in her writing for the Odyssey. “That’s just something I’ve dealt with my whole life and I’ve always felt super alone and in the dark and like nobody else was going through what I was going through,” she said.
But Decker realized that she was not alone when reading other people’s Odyssey articles about their own struggles with mental illness. Today, Decker writes about her experiences with mental illness in the hopes that she can show others that they are not alone.
Decker’s close friend, a fellow freshman, Akila Gopalkrishnan says Deycker's articles are “a representation of more than one group of people rather than just her.”
Gopalkrishnan says Decker is very dedicated to her writing and that “if she’s not doing her homework she’s thinking about things to write about,” jotting down notes whenever an idea comes to her. “She’s very outgoing. She’s talks to everyone. She’s bubbly, creative.”
Writing is not Decker's only talent. She is a Bassoonist for the Trinity Orchestra and a dancer. In one of her articles, “How Being a Performer Saved My Life,” Decker describes how important performing was to her during the more difficult times in her life. Just like writing, her experiences as a musician and a dancer have served as important emotional outlets for her.
The Odyssey community at Trinity is still rather small compared with those of other universities. One of Decker’s goals as the editor-in-chief is growing the community through recruiting more writers. She believes “Trinity has a really unique set of students” who have a lot of interesting things to say. She hopes that the Odyssey will become that platform for Trinity students to share their unique voices.
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