Dear Diary,

Many a famous diary has started with this phrase, and although writers do begin their entries with variations of the phrase — Anne Frank, for instance, addressed her pages as “Kitty” — today diaries serve as a therapeutic method to pour the soul onto paper.

“It keeps me sane,” Graham High, a freshman in biomedical engineering, said. “I’m able to clear my head of anything and everything when I write it out on paper.”

High, who has been keeping a journal for seven months, said he feels there are many benefits of having a diary.

“Keeping a diary allows me to constantly be aware of anything that has been going not so well in my life, and there have been plenty of times that I’ve come to some catharsis after writing in it,” he said.

Lavenia Lipford, a freshman in computer engineering, said keeping a diary is a way to keep one’s self uncensored.

“In a diary, you can express yourself without the consequences,” Lipford said.

High shared the same sentiment.

“I write every thought that I have in it,” he said. “I mean every thought, no matter how awful or negative.”

While High uses his diary for mental clarity, Lipford, who has been keeping a diary for two years, said it is a useful tool she uses to track personal growth.

“Once I’m much older, it will be pretty cool to look back and read what I was writing in the here and now, then,” Lipford said.

And although having a diary is important to Lipford, the demands of college have broken the habit of writing in her diary on a regular basis.

“I try to write in it often, but sometimes I go a week or two without even thinking about it because of school and everything,” Lipford said. “But when something big happens, I try to make time.”

High tries to make an effort to write in his journal on a regular basis.

“I write in it at least three times a week before I go to bed, but sometimes I am completely seized by an idea that arises out of nowhere in the middle of a class,” he said. “I know if I don’t write it down as soon as possible, I’ll lose it.”

Both High and Lipford said they take some precautions to keep prying eyes from reading their thoughts.

“I put it out of sight, but not to the extreme where I have a box with a lock,” Lipford said.

But both of their diaries have been found.

“One of my suitemates found it one day and opened it,” High said. “I saw him do it and stopped him before he was able to read any of it. He didn’t mean any harm by it, I’m sure he was just curious as to what it was.”

Lipford said he had a similar experience.

“My older sister and younger brother were snooping through my room while I was at Freshman Orientation. They found my diary and were about to read it but my mother stopped them,” she said, laughing. “Maybe next time!”

Excerpts from famous diaries

“Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before beginning to improve the world.”

“I don’t believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.”

“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“The truth is, my house is mighty dangerous, having so many ways to be come to; and at my windows, over the stairs, to see who goes up and down; but, if I escape to-night, I will remedy it. God preserve us this night safe! So at almost two o’clock, I home to my house, and, in great fear, to bed, thinking every running of a mouse really a thiefe; and so to sleep, very brokenly, all night long, and found all safe in the morning.”

Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys