Inspiration to the max

If you are not familiar with the Roger Ebert article, please read it here.

Roger Ebert is an exceptionally remarkable man. He has endured many surgeries to try and help him regain his speaking abilities. He has lost his jaw, and his ability to speak and eat. He has had cancer of the thyroid and cancer of the jaw. After all of his unfortunate failed surgeries, he is not a different man. He may look different and can't speak or eat. But, he is still the same man at heart. He doesn't let his disabilities get in the way of things he likes to do. He finds ways to live his life the same way but with different methods. He can still get his words and thoughts clearly out, he just cannot speak them. When given the choice to give up or move forward through these problems he chose to move forward. Although he has many problems, he still is very happy and lives a good life with people that care for him. This man has so much hope, and brings so much inspiration to everyone. Just reading this article brought tears to my eyes as to see how much hope this man has. He is a wonderful man, and I hope he brought as much inspiration to you as he did to me.

humanity,hope,human spirit? What are these things?

This humanity/hope/human spirit unit has kind of put me at a halt. I'm not quite sure where we are going with this huge unit. Hope is a strong word for me. Earlier in the year I spent an entire week in the PICU at Cooper University hospital. The PICU is the pediactric intensive care unit. I was very sick and I really had no hope. I didn't think I was going to get better. My mom, my inspiration, texted all of my friends and told them to forward around her text. Her text was telling people to text my phone and tell me to get out of bed, and get better so I could come home. I got so many texts, some from people I didn't even talk to. She gave me hope to get better.

I constantly wonder what guides people in their different directions, of either giving up or moving forward and making their lives better. I really hope  we do a part of this unit where we talk about how people choose their directions. We don't really have a class definition for humanity yet, but I hope we define it together(or at least try). Honestly, I'm not quite sure what we are going to do with the "human spirit".

What's going on?

Hey guys. Lets start out with an introduction. I'm Hannah Collier and I'm 15 years old. I'm usually very open with my thoughts and emotions. I'm usually not quiet and if I am, it means something's really wrong. I love sports, I play soccer and lacrosse and I also swim. I am in love with music, I can't survive a day without listening to it. I don't really like mainstream music. I find a lot of my own music, and don't let it get out. I'm not like others, I see things differently than most people. I've been through many things that not many people have gone through, and they have shaped my life in many ways.

I'm enrolled in the Gifted and Talented seminar year two at Northern Burlington. Yes, we are nerds and we love it. The class is challenging, but we learn a lot. Last year we tried a new technique where the students are in charge of the class. We had some problems but we got back on track quickly. This year we are trying the same technique. Our main topic for this semester is humanity. We're not quite sure where this is going to lead us, but keep up to date with our blogs and see how things go!