Young Writers Society

Is there anybody, real or fictional, acquainted or not, who you look up to? What it is about them that causes you to respect or admire them? How much do you think your life or craft has been influenced by them?

Also, what do you think makes a good role model, and is there anybody you know who looks up to you?

I sometimes look up to my best friends, because they just seem better at just surviving. I mean yes there were times they gave up too, but I'm not as strong as them.

I also know a few kids who look up to me in my school and I try my best to make myself look more like an equal friend than a role model.

I look up to a lot of people. I am a pretty flawed person, so when I can look to others for opinions and ways to act, I will.

I look up to my dad. My dad is an extremely patient man, a great writer, and he seems to have wisdom. (Though I don't know yet; I'm still a teenager. I don't know anything about wisdom.) In him, I see a lot of things that I want to be. Not everything, but a lot of things.

I look up to my mom as well, because she's doing the best she can and is just an amazing person. I must say that me and my sister clash with Mom a lot, just because she's our mom and because sometimes... well, it's hard to explain. But we clash a lot. And yet I still look up to her, because despite two troublesome daughters, my mother continues on, tries to help us as best as she can, and when you look past what aggravates me, my mom really is a good person. She's helped me to become more social, and I can learn a lot from her.

I look up to my sister, because she is everything I'm not. She is athletic, smart, and hard-working. She s determined and diligent (most of the time). She is a strong person, and I love her, and even though she's younger than me, I still look up to her in some ways.

I look up to my current English teacher just because she seems like she's got it all figured out. She is extremely composed, confident, intelligent, and productive. She seems like a genuinely good person, helping others whenever she can, and she cares about her students. She is utterly devoted to her job, and is also pretty good at it as well. I look up to her because it really does seem that she has her life under control and flowing in the right direction, and she made it flow that way all on her own.

I look up to my two close friends, whom I will call N and C. I look up to N because she is just an amazing person all-around. Sometimes I get jealous of her, she seems so awesome. She is a great writer, extremely funny and nice, and an all-around great person to be around. She helps me look up and smile. I look up to C because she is extremely intelligent, and also seems to have most of her life (at the moment) figured out. She's productive and smart, two qualities I definitely admire about her. She's also just a good person to hang around, and she's really nice. She's helped me with my schoolwork more times than I can count.

I look up to a lot of the people on my soccer team, just because of their devotion to the sport. Many of them are so good at soccer that I wonder how I'm able to be on the same team as them. They are truly awesome.

I look up to my cousins, with different reasons for each cousin. I look up to one because of her composure, another because of his intelligence and skills, another because of his physical fitness, another because of her easy-going attitude. The list goes on.

And... I think that's all I can think of right now.

Great question Tenyo!

I've had a lot of people that I consider to be role-models throughout the years.

I have a few people I consider religious role-models because of their faithfulness, genuineness, openness, and humility - but I wouldn't necessarily look up to them for career / academic role-modeling. One woman comes to mind as my absolute spiritual role-model - she's in her mid 60s and just the ways she serves and cares for others is so impressive to me. Something all of my religious/spiritual role-models have in common is that not only are they people who I would like to be more like, but they've all challenged me in some way.

In school (especially high school & college more-so than grad school) I've had a few friends who I'd consider role-models, especially in clubs that I've been involved in, but really in just how they interact with the world and approach life to. I think qualities they had in common; confidence in who they are (this is hugely admirable to me!), boldness, an ability to teach me something, and they all invested in me somehow - either by sharing advice or encouragement or just taking me seriously. There is something so powerful about being believed in - and I think that's one of the primary qualities of my role-models is that they have communicated to me that they believe in me.

I look up to my mom immensely because she's in the same career path as I am - but I think one thing about getting older is that you realize your parents aren't perfect. At this point in my life there are still a lot of ways I try to be just like my mom in, but I'm also very conscious of ways I don't want to be like her if that makes sense. And I think that's a healthy place to be with your long-term role-models is to realize that they themselves aren't perfect - and you aren't them, so sometimes need to do things your own way.

I think I've been a role model for a few people here and there, because I generally try to take teaching, mentoring, leadership roles in the organizations and jobs that I'm a part of. Three of the last jobs I've been in have been educational &/or youth related which also just gives me the opportunity to interact with a lot of people who are younger than I am. I'm also an older sister, and that has been probably the most defining role of my identity - it's the relationship that I have gained the most in and the one I cherish the most - so I think sometimes I bring "big sister vibes" to some of my relationships with younger friends, whether I intend to or not, which I think also helps!

That's an interesting question! I would say that my biggest role model is the woman who directs the musical I participate in (I would call her a drama teacher, but this is outside of school).

There are so many things about her that I respect and admire. I really admire the fact that she chose to pursue both math (she was an accountant for a while) and then later art (she has a degree in music therapy), as I've always felt like I'd have to choose between math or art, while she showed me that you don't have to choose. I also love the fact that she is hilarious and has a wonderful sense of humour, but still knows when something needs to be discussed seriously. She cares about the people around her, and would go out of her way to help them whenever possible. I have never heard her say even the slightest judgemental thing, and she is totally welcoming to every single person she meets. I really try to be as accepting and kind as she is. Also, she has a great sense of style, so there's that.

I'd have to agree with @alliyah that a big thing I respect in all people is confidence in themselves. I admire kindness too (well, obviously), and one thing I find super inspiring is people who are motivated to learn, work hard, and improve themselves.

I'm not really sure if I've been a role model for anyone - I've worked and volunteered a lot with really little kids (like, 3, 4, and 5 year olds), and I hope I've at least inspired them a little and helped them to grow.

I don't have a role-model, but I do hate my currently dead uncle with an unusual burning passion. Mostly because he influenced a lot of things about the way I am today, for better or worse.

Elaborating.

This man developed an interest in making me some sort of disciple of his way of thought for reasons that I'm slowly starting to figure out. He made it his mission to teach me about hunting beasts, and eventually convinced my parents to let him do that. So, we went camping for a few weeks when I was a kid and we hunted.

I hated every second of it, so I sneaked an MP3 with electronic music in it to remind myself of city life (I somehow thought I'd never got back to it. I read Jumanji a lot at the time, and thought that he had trapped me inside of an endless forest or something).
I also sneaked in my DS with a Pokémon game and was endlessly mocked by him every time he'd see me play instead of focusing on whatever it is was he wanted to teach me.
The problem is, the hunts ended up becoming interesting because I like learning things and he taught me a lot — mostly by likening hunting to handling life in general, which honestly was pretty cool. I just hate that he felt the need to force me to go through something so random to teach me that.

I got my revenge, however, when I taught him that Pokémon's competitive playing could be way more complex than Chess, a game he's a die-hard fan of. He switched from Chess to Pokémon as a result and got endlessly mocked by his peers because of it, just like he used to mock me. On a random fun note, his favorite Pokémon was a Grumpig named Altheo, and that thing kicked major butts. I think I still have it.
Anyway, he's dead now, but the last thing he told me was to "keep studying until I reached my eighties". I wasn't sure why a dying man would tell me that, especially since he got the slow and painful treatment (which he honestly didn't deserve, to be fair), but I decided to take those words seriously. It seemed important.
We're around ten years later now and I'm starting to see glimpses of what he meant, and how to apply it to my creative process in general.

Turns out the man really did know what the heck he was talking about. Thanks to him, I can treat my passions and the passions of others with respect. Thanks to him, I understand the importance of knowledge and its application in every part of one's self-expression system. Thanks to him, or rather because of him, I understand the need of absolutely not bullying anyone into hating what they do just because you think it's worth making fun of.
Then, because of him, I basically can't bring myself to be anything but serious all the time, which I like, but it's kind of a pain sometimes. I am working on dry humor, however.


So, yeah. That's my uncle. If anything, I suppose that he helped me have nature as a role model, now. Can't get 8-bit tunes out of my head every time I look at so much as a single leaf, though. Fun side-effect.