What is a Hero?

"I was in uniform for four years, and I know that heroism doesn't occur from taking orders, but rather from people who through their own willpower and strength are willing to sacrifice their lives for an idea."-Thor Heyerdahl

 As a child, I was often imbued by the world of cartoon superheroes such as the Powerpuff Girls, Rogue and Jean Grey. As I grew, I became fascinated with the works of John Hughes, the music of La Roux and the acts of Carey Mulligan. All these fictional and non-fictional icons; were all my heroes. Until I realize the true meaning of a hero today.

 A real hero is someone like Gandhi, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Erin Gruwell, to name a few. Why are they heroes? They all share a similar quality of compassion towards the weaker, strength to stand for righteousness and courage to sacrifice themselves for the better of others. And all of that, without the lust for fame or notoriety. That; is what a real hero is made of.

 In the song, "Superman's Song" by the Crash Test Dummies( Ms. Abena you've killer taste in music), the lyrics portrayed a sense of self-sacrifice, compassion and non-superiority as Superman acts in his noble ways through pure initiative and not for the limelights as seen in the chorus paragraph:

"Superman never made any money

For saving the world from Solomon Grundy

And sometimes I despair the world will never see

Another man like him"

 Whereas in the poem "First They Came for the Jews", it clearly contrasted with the lyrics of Superman as depicted acts on the opposite end of the spectrum. In the poem, the poet says of himself as someone that lacks of initiative. The speaker does not speak out for anything that is relative to himself as seen in these 3 stanzas:

"First they came for the communists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew."

 The speaker in the end succumbed to his own act of selfishness in the end when he is said to be taken away, and this time, no one will speak out for him as well. The speaker finally takes a sip of his own poison in the last stanza as nobody also wanted to take a stand for him in his most dire moment:

"Then they came for me,

    and there was no-one left to speak out for me. "

  Many of us today are still often too engrossed in our egos to see that the essence of humanity is merely to see ourselves as neither superior nor inferior to anyone. We all live on the same planet, breath the same air hence why should humanity be divided according to our race, religion or even beliefs?

The blood of martyrs have been shed countlessly in the past, yet, we still live in a materialistic world where books are judged by their covers. And in the midst of the norm, there will be a handful of people who will storm out with a voice, a purpose and a fight for a better tomorrow.

And these are, heroes.

My Hero 2 ( 4/4/1928- Maya Angelou)

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 


Mary Angelou's life; documented eloquently but informally as dates and time-charts blur out of vision in her biographies as said by her biographer once, portrays her famous quote well. Though details of Mary Angelou's life were inconsistent, she captured the important essence of her trials and tribulations while growing up in difficult times ( Great Depression and World War 2) and losing close friends (Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, who were both assassinated). Her continuous strive to bring up her son as a single parent and will to live brought her through different phases of jobs from working as a prostitute up until becoming the established poet that we all know today.


What is life without a purpose? What is love without passion? Through Maya Angelou's biographies, especially the highly-aclaimed "I Know Why The Caged Birds Sing", teaches us to persevere. Maya Angelou is  not an iconic person that can be recognised through the term 'hero', but she's an amazing individual that lived her life to the fullest. We here today, complain about the slightest things such as exams and being bored at home whereas Maya Angelou in our age persevered through high school and later earning a scholarship to study in the California Labor School; one of her earliest accomplishments in her life.


I end my short essay on Maya Angelou with another amazing quote from her that once again emphasises on perseverance;

All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare, awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated". 

Reflection (24/3/12-30/2/12)

This week, we completed our BISP essays and I rewrote my whole essay as my previous thesis statement was vague and I couldn't find strong topic sentences to support my thesis statement. After carefully planning out a clear thesis statement, I was then able to write the essay with more eloquence. I also learnt how to include a bibliography with my essay for the first time. It was frustrating at first as the easybib.com application needs to be manually filled in at times but with the bibliography, I am able to cite my evidence and avoid plagiarism.

Although I personally feel that my new essay was slightly better than the previous essay, I still feel that it wasn't one of my best essays as I was unable to go in depth within my topic and analyze the evidences clearly. I hope that I would be able to read between the lines better to develop my analyzing skills. I also feel that I enjoy widening my vocabulary as I could then apply interesting and abstract words to make my essay sound more sophisticated.

 As for the Literature Circles, my group members and I are able to produce fruitful discussions on 1984 by George Orwell as everyone spoke and engage in the discussions. I find the book rich with vocabularies and realise it is important to have a dictionary handy while reading. I also recorded the new vocabularies learnt from the story into my Language Record so that I would not forget those words.

 I enjoy reading how the author imply fascist elements practised from the past and current generations( totalitarian ruling and 'newspeaks' can be seen in North Korea) into the story as these ideas make the story somewhat relatable and prevents it from feeling too fictional.

The story DOES get more interesting as it progresses. 1984 really helps by improving my vocabulary and that's definitely a challenge, not the mere amount of pages that have to be read after spring break.

My Birthday Hero

Thomas Paine

  An author, an inventor, a pamphleteer, a radical, a revolutionist, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and also, a corset maker. Thomas Paine’s biggest achievement was writing the “Common Sense” pamphlet in 1776 that helped to shape the American Revolution by supporting the democratic peace theory and prevent totalitarianism from Great Britain.

  Despite being maligned, abhorred and even ostracized during his funeral, Thomas Paine stood firm on his beliefs and made radical changes that inspired men such as Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Edison. His courageous fight for the independence of America even though he was British inspires me to take initiative and do what is right instead of conforming to majority’s belief.  Thomas Paine imbues a passion for individuality and can be exemplified by the quote “Lead, follow or get out of the way.”

Through his revolutionary acts, Thomas Paine showed me the importance of standing forth and simply, having the guts to be an individual grounded by self-principles. Hence, I hope that his actions will continue to inspire more people to take action for their passion.

reflection (19/3/12-23/3/12)

  This week, we watched a presentation by Ms Abena on how to write a good reflection. The presentation really helped as I used to be stubbornly ignorant of the prompts. Hence the excessive waffling on almost every blog post. I really enjoyed learning about writing an effective reflection as I would now know how to produce a good reflection that will help me in the future and not just written for the sake of passing up an assignment.

  In my previous reflection, I used the tips given in the presentation to improve on my reflections and felt that it was the best reflection I've written by far. I felt that I've detailed the lessons in a way that I'll be able to remember in the future. I also made a habit of putting the prompts in my blog post to guide my reflection while writing it and remove it once I've finished writing my post as this prevents me from waffling.

  While researching on ways to write our essay conclusions today, it also made me realise the importance of mapping out an idea structure for our essays before writing. I have always been the type who simply writes an essay without a structure (and somehow managed to escape from getting stuck in writing essays miraculously ever since I started writing) but now, I find myself incompetent of producing a satisfying essay without proper planning. Hence, I will frequent the essay maps in the future to help me strategise my ideas before writing an essay. It will be good for me to have more practises on writing essays as this would help me get back on track and hopefully, prevent a writer's block from happening to me in the near future, as the saying goes, "practise makes perfect".

Reflection (12/3/12-16/3/12)

Reflection-presentation on essay features

  Today we have seen peers developing their comprehension towards english in a spectrum of effective media such as Voicethread and iMovie to name a few. Not only have I learnt more about composing an essay that consists of elements such as thesis statement, topic sentences, analysing and more, I've also learnt more on how to use the iMovie program. I do consider myself as someone who's not spontaneous when it comes to information technology and usually give up halfway through learning, but with the help of my partner Pei Qin, she guided me and before I knew it, I was getting the hang of using the iMovie program. And it was fun a process too as I learn and practise while making the presentation together with Pei Qin.

  Working with Pei Qin taught me to value the time and effort of others placed into the work as the results would definitely display the efficiency of all members as an individual's work reflect his/her partners work too hence it would be unfair to take credit for the work of others. I also learnt that I tend to be overbearing all the time hence while working on this presentation, I reflected on those mistakes and tried my best to prevent myself from doing so. I was glad to see the outcome comprising of a balanced teamwork between Pei Qin and I. I felt alleviated that I was able to overcome that overbearing attitude of myself.

Our outcome was short, concise and lighthearted thus it managed to capture the attention of our peers. We also aim to make it a learner-friendly presentation to enhance comprehension and through the responses given by our peers on the rubric marking scheme, our presentation was understandable by everyone and we were happy to achieve this goal. The only thing I wished we could have done was to produce an assessment to test the understanding of our classmates in topic sentences; which was the topic we presented on. Overall, the presentation helped me to understand the components of an essay better and I hope our presentation was able to help others as well.