Universal Studios announced yesterday when their newest attraction, The Harry Potter Experience, will open. Most of our staff was over the moon to hear that this would be opening this year, and we imagine that there will be plenty of students just as excited as we were.

 
This also opened up quite the discussion as we put together this issue.

 
The Harry Potter series, whether that be the books or the movies, has had a huge impact on us. Yes, we fell in love with the story and the characters. Yes, we secretly wished we would get our letters from Hogwarts and yes, most of us took the sorting hat quiz on Pottermore.com. But we also think back on the series fondly for completely grown up reasons.

 
For most of us, Harry Potter was the first series that completely engaged our imagination. It helped us through rough patches as we were growing up. It was a series where the characters experienced the same growing pains we did, and we discovered that it really was ok to be different. And most importantly, it taught us to love reading.

 
Once we got a few books into Harry Potter, we were so invested we had to finish the series. Harry Potter taught us to be literarily open minded. Harry Potter pushed our creative minds to places we really hadn’t expected or experienced before that.

 
We also discovered that one of us on the staff doesn’t read unless it’s assigned for a class.

 
The rest of us feel that reading for pleasure since childhood has vastly improved our lives. Reading formed our imagination in a way that just viewing TV or movies couldn’t. Our comprehension and writing skills have absolutely benefited from being avid readers.

 
The news from Universal Studios reminded us how lucky we were to have lived with J. K. Rowling’s masterpiece.

 
And in other Harry Potter news, yesterday Rowling stated that Voldemort was nowhere near as evil as Donald Trump, so there’s just one more reason to love her.