Hero Project Reflection

In my opinion, a hero becomes a hero by serving as a role model or inspiration to another person- whether benefiting you was their direct intention or not.

For the Hero In My Eyes project, we had to create a character sketch about a person who we saw as a hero. It needed to be, however, someone who you had easy access to. For example, you couldn't choose to base your project on a celebrity, politician, or someone who has passed away. The character sketch was a deep description of your hero, and within the description needed to be the reason they were your hero. You needed to give lots of detail about the moment they became your hero, and why.

We started with brainstorming what being a hero meant to us. Once we were able to create all of our own definitions, we had to choose a hero of our own. I chose Christopher Stephens, my former summer camp counselor (to learn more about him, click HERE). Before I could start writing my character sketch, I had to interview Chris. I asked him a ton of questions pertaining to his opening and running his summer camp, and with his responses, I was able to create a writing piece describing him with even more precision because I could use his actual dialogue from the interview in the character sketch. Also, after the interview I took a few pictures of him to use for the project. I needed one displaying his heroism and another just showing his personality.

I learned a lot about how before I can write an in depth writing piece about something or someone, it is really important to be knowledgeable when it comes to their past and background. I learned this mostly in the process of interviewing Chris. I found that there were a lot of things I didn't know about him in terms of his motivation to work with kids and open his own summer camp. Though those things may seem paltry, they are actually very important to creating an image of him and his personality in the reader's mind. The main challenge I faced during this project was that I was having a really difficult time tying his interview dialogue into the writing piece where I had to describe him, as well as his heroic moment. If I could go back and change one aspect of the way I did this project, I think I would spend more time defining what I hero really was to me. Chris would absolutely still be my hero, but at the beginning of the project, I had a really tough time coming up with who my hero really was. I think if I would have gone deeper into what a hero really was to me, I would have been able to decide much faster than I did. This would have helped because I could have started getting together the rest of my project much farther in advance than I did- I took a pretty long time choosing my hero when I could have been working on other parts of the project.

To me, perspective was a huge part of the Hero In My Eyes project. This is because every person has a different version or definition of what a hero is to them. In class, we spent a lot of time discussing the different ways a person might think of a person as a hero. It was important to understand and accept that each person has their own view, and you might disagree with someone else's view, but you need to step back and agree to disagree. Chances are you would not be able to convince them out of their opinion, because they are attached to their opinion just as much as you are to yours. It was also very interesting for me to see other peoples' perspectives because even though their viewpoints didn't change mine, I was able to have a much deeper understanding as to why they saw a person as a hero. Their reasonings made a lot more sense when they described their hero in their character sketches because it really took you deep into the impact that person had on them.

My Final Hero Character Sketch

“Why Salubrious?” I asked my old camp counselor, Christopher Stephens.

“I wanted a name that people wouldn’t know what it meant so it forced them to go to the dictionary- so it forced them to be educated,” he responded, matter-of-factly.

He had always been big on education. It was one of the most important things to him about people- kids especially. Respect from kids was essential behavior to him too.

“I’ve always said I would rather have a bunch of stupid kids who were nice to each other than a bunch of intelligent kids who were jerks to each other.” And he did always say that. He deprecated petulant kids. It was his number one rule for all of us kids at his summer camp. He engraved it in our minds. Respect. At the time, of course, being six years old, we did not have the depth to be able to comprehend just how valuable of an attribute it would be. Chris, however, taught us well. He wasn’t just a summer camp head counselor to us, he was the epitome of what to do with our summer days.

His 6”5, rounded like a fitter Humpty Dumpty, his body was topped with a head of fluffy sandy, short gold hair. He took life lightly; he even used to wear a paper sign saying ‘don’t feed the bear’ as a joke not to let him eat your food during lunch. He had a huge heart and an even bigger love for kids, and we loved him just as much.

Through the camp, he gave us more than the joy of learning to play sports and how to stay together on field trips. He gave us friendships that would last us our lifetime. Seven summers spent bonding with friends closer than we thought imaginable.

“I hated summer camp when I was a kid,” he slurped the last splash of water from his tall, sweating glass of water and rattled the ice cubes around with the tip of his straw, “but there was one camp that I went to, for one summer, and I loved it. Then it closed. It was like no other camp I had been to before. The camp was gone, but the memory of the joy I took away from it stuck with me.”

I smiled. There were so many irreplaceable memories and experiences with Camp Salubrious over the years. We were a big happy family- every single one of us. For seven years we would tediously deal with school, counting down the days until we could go back to camp and spend the hot summer days with our best friends.

“Did you take any precautions before opening Camp Salubrious? Weren’t there risks that needed to be acknowledged?” I always wondered if he had any apprehensions to opening an individual camp.

“I kind of just jumped in full force. It was a lot of money up front- you have to buy things before you know if any kids are coming to the camp. Liability of the kids is huge. I wasn’t just some counselor working for the local YMCA. I was the owner of the entire camp. I was responsible for every single kid. If anything happened, it was all on me,” he picked up his water glass again.

“But how did you do it?” I asked, marveling at just how efficacious his camp ended up being and how significantly his impact was on my life and the person I am today, “How did you create the perfect summer milieu?”

“I just remembered what I hated about all those other summer camps when I was a kid, and made sure I omitted them from the way I ran mine,” he smiled, doubtlessly proud of himself, as he adjusted his tall, fuzzy, black and white Mickey Mouse hat.

The great pleasure his escape of a camp brought us was beyond anything we had experienced, and ever will experience. Now that the camp is closed, our memories and friendships are all we have left of what was the best summer camp in the world.

The Origin of Zero

What fascinates me most about the origin of zero is how someone figured out exactly how long ago it was invented/created, and exactly where it traveled and how it was spread around the world. I noticed that all of the articles had deep detail about the number zero's expedition around the world, and included things like labeled maps to further your understanding of it's travels even more.

One thing that made a lot of sense to me is when the journalists were describing zero as starting out as just a place-holder. That really gave me a clearer idea of how it fist came about, as more of a symbol than a quantity.

In my opinion, it wasn't a single person that invented/created zero. The way I think it all happened was that the efficacious societies with good communication systems had some kind of symbol they used as place-holders, the way we use zero now.

As for the invention/creation of the actual quantity zero, I assume there was already some sort of broad way of communication with numbers to where someone could teach another person to replace their place-holder symbols with the number zero. I'm not positive on what my perspective is on that though.

Literary Devices

Catching the signal from one of her friends, Bianca brushed her skirt, took a deep breath and walked towards where he was sitting. She hid a sneer with an over exaggerated smile as she skipped toward him.
"Hey, Jadon!" she exclaimed, taking a seat next to him on the cold as ice burgs cement steps. She couldn't believe she was actually doing this. She never thought she'd have the guts to pull such a mean trick on someone. It was okay, though. He deserved it for all those times he teased and tricked us teens. His pranks were so numerous she wasn't even able to keep count. It all started one day in second grade. They were eating lunch and he had replaced her sandwich with a bag of dirt- she would never forget that day.
"Hey, Bianca," he smiled at her, looking up from his book.
"So what did you think of my vignette?" she asked, desperate for ways to distract him enough to where he wouldn't look to his right where her devious friends were pranking him.
Confusion started to surface in his light brown, copper-toned, mud puddle eyes.
"Uh. It was good," he replied, "Did you like mine?"
I smiled, trying to look relaxed. Her hair danced across her shoulder, proceeding to tickle her cheek. She shivered, freezing in the icy weather, longing for her friends to speed up their devious act...