Who am I?

According to the About Me page I wrote in grade 8: 

My name is Silas. This is the blog that I have created to showcase some of the work that I have done in my program PLP (Performance Learning Program). Most of my posts will be presenting the work I have been doing in specific projects, but this page is all about me.

I like to mountain bike, breakdance, write, read, bake, play music, and much more. I also like to hang out with my friends and family. I love learning new skills and meeting new people. When I get older I want to pursue writing by being an author or screenwriter.

Is this who I still am, and more importantly, is this who I want to be?

This is similar to what I explored in my most recent humanities project: Who Are You Going to Be? The driving question was:

How can we use our blog to communicate the kind of person we want to be?

There are a few things that helped me come to that conclusion.

Learning From Others

Everyone has at least one person that inspires them who they can learn from. Whether these people are celebrities, parents, friends, or even fictional characters, there is always something that they have in common. There is something that they do that you respect and can learn from.

As part of this I read the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. A true story about the inspiring Louis Zamperini, a Olympian who fought in the Air Force during World War II and was captured and tortured by the Japanese. After everything that happened to him, he always persevered and even when faced with horrible PTSD, he was still able to live a comfortable life.

I found this to be a very inspiring story because of his incredible selflessness and his inspiring level of perseverance. As for what I learned, these are five key takeaways that I got from Zamperini’s story:

  • Help others whenever you can
  • If you work hard you will achieve success
  • Stay strong when faced with challenges
  • If you persevere, life will get better
  • Everyone deserves a second chance

If you would like to see my full notes, click here.

A more hands on way of learning from an inspiring person was by interviewing one. I chose to interview my family friend, Andreas Hestler. He is a professional mountain biker, Olympian, and innovator. I had an awesome chat with him.

Click this link to see the clips that I chose to highlight the main takeaways from the interview.

  • Here are the main points I learned from my chat:
  • Success is found in doing what you enjoy
  • You must enjoy the path to success
  • Don’t let anything hold you back
  • If you work hard to achieve your goals you will achieve success

One more way that I explored this idea of learning from others was by watching TED Talks from inspiring people such as this one from Sam Berns:

This was a great way to hear lots of different success stories in a short period of time. Here were my main takeaways from that:

  • Being happy is what’s most important
  • Don’t let your setbacks control your life
  • Challenges are part of life
  • Focus on what you can do instead of what you can’t
  • Don’t miss a party

To organize everything, I created a graphic organizer. I used emojis to connect the points that relate to each other. The fact that almost every point has another just like it shows that there is a pattern in these different stories of success and inspiration.

Critiquing Myself

Part of becoming the person you want to be is knowing what you are doing wrong. I started by looking at my blog. I have been using this blog for two and a half years now, and with each post, I improve. As part of this project, I took a look at what I thought was important to change about my blog.

Click this link to see my self critique.

This brings me back to that first question: Who am I, and who do I want to be? My answer to this is what I am putting in my new and improved about me page. When people click on my blog now, I hope that they will get a better sense of who I am and most importantly, who I am going to be.

So who am I going to be?

I am Silas.

I love mountain biking, skiing, weightlifting, breakdancing, hanging out with friends and family, and so much more. I am passionate about spending time with the people I love most. I am always learning and seeking out new opportunities.

I hope to be successful in life. Not in the sense that I want to make a lot of money or get a lot of power, but in how happy and fulfilled my life is. My two main goals in life are to be happy and make the people around me happy. I hope that you will join me in my mission of becoming the most successful version of myself there is.