Aspiring writer.
Tired law school student.
Amateur houseplant fanatic.
Hi, I'm Maggie.
About Me.
I've loved stories for as long as I can remember. My best childhood memories involve my mom reading C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia to me right before bed, then begging her to read just one more chapter, or dictating stories I'd make up as she hurried to scribble them down on loose sheets of notebook paper. When I figured out how to write, I made my own storybooks from old cereal box cardboard and scrap paper, held together with some haphazard staples.
When I was a kid, my dream was to become a writer and write books like Narnia. My parents, half-jokingly, told me I had to make money. So, I ended up in a little town called Cedarville, where I went to Cedarville University for Political Science (and my parents wanted me to make money---ha). After graduating in 2023, I ended up at THE Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, where I currently go to law school (so maybe I will end up making money, after all).
But my impulse to write never left. So, starting when I was in college, I found ways to work in some writing.
I did write for my school's student-run newspaper, but my writing journey as an adult started about half a year before when Cedarville University's president became embroiled in a scandal in 2020. Without going into too many details here (see my portfolio for more), I was tapped by a classmate, who asked me to write (anonymously) for a blog he anonymously started to voice student perspectives about Cedarville's scandal. I agreed.
While it might not have been my finest (and definitely was not my most academic) writing, writing for that blog made me re-realize how much I enjoyed writing. I remember needing to process my thoughts anyway, which is part of why I agreed to write for it (although we were scared of getting in trouble with our university administration), and I was pleasantly surprised that people actually visited that blog and read what we published. Incidentally, because of my writing and how much we worked together, my fellow student who started the blog started to like me---and now we're married. But that's its own story.
After writing for the blog over the Summer of 2020, I wanted to keep working on writing projects (the kind that wasn't associated with my major). I joined Cedarville's student-run newspaper, Cedars, where I discovered I love the process of writing articles, especially getting to meet and talk to folks I otherwise wouldn't cross paths with.
Well, I mostly love the process. If you can't tell by now, I have and still do struggle with word limits (God bless my editors). I'm working on it.
After finishing my undergraduate degree at Cedarville, I ended up at OSU for law school. Can I be honest? Law school is OK, but I miss having a writing outlet that doesn't follow IRAC/CRExAC, and has nothing to do with the Bluebook.
Hence, this website. I'm hoping to use this to jumpstart my writing journey again, whatever that may look like. In all honesty, I have no idea if people will read it, or be interested in my work, and that's fine with me. But after reading and hearing stories all my life, I hope to start sharing and writing one of my own.
a note about the name.
I chose to name this website "It's just Maggie" for 3 reasons.
1. "It's just Maggie" happens to be a phrase I've said a lot---I've said this phrase at pretty much every stage of my life (since I could talk)---because usually at some point, people ask
"So, is Maggie short for something?"
And I answer,
"Ah no, it's just Maggie."
Margaret was my grandmother (very proud), but I'm just Maggie.
2. At some point, I've used "It's just Maggie" or some variation as a username, partially because of a corny tie-in with law school (the justice system), and partially as a play on words. One of my favorite verses is Micah 6:8, and I aspire to act and live justly, regardless whether I end up working in the legal world.
3. "It's just Maggie" reads to me like a phrase said with a shrug (also from lived experience). And I think that's accurate, in one sense. It's just me! No one extraordinary. I believe any impact I may have isn't---at its core---attributable to me.
In another sense, "it's just Maggie" isn't accurate. Because it's never been just me, or in other words, only me. There's a hackneyed phrase, 'we stand on the shoulders of giants,' the ones who came before us. That's true, but I also know I'm only standing now because my family and my community have stood beside me to hold me up.
It's never been just me, because I would be nowhere without the people I love.
Most importantly, it's really never been just Maggie because God has been there all along, from the beginning. God wrote my story, so anything good that comes out of it is attributable to God, not me.
And if there's any impact? Great! I don't know if there will be, but I'll write nonetheless.
Maybe one day there is impact (not the point, but cool if it happens). And if there is, I hope I can say, "it wasn't me; I'm just Maggie. But it was God."