“The best protection any woman can have is courage.” When I was younger, I gravely lacked fortitude. However, in the past months, I have become fearless. Prominent activists and distinguished novels inspire me to be confident in my individuality. Katherine Johnson, an American woman who competed in the space race against the Soviets, relentlessly campaigned for her right to work for NASA, alongside a staff which predominantly consisted of white men. Despite how difficult it might have been to be a successfully employed woman of color in the 1950s and 60s, she managed to make huge contributions to the U.S. aeronautics and space programs. Her work as a physicist and mathematician permanently altered the way society would perceive not only women, but African Americans as a whole. Activists like Johnson, who overcome difficult obstacles in order to bring about change, give me the courage to do the same. Without these role models, I would not be fearless enough to independently stand up for an unpopular opinion of mine. …show more content…
Although I wish I could say that Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief changed my life, sadly that’s not true. However, the novel The Wave unquestionably impacted my ability to be confident enough to stand up for myself. Growing up, I allowed my comfort zone to be established by the expectations of authority figures. The Wave is a novel in which a high school teacher conducts a classroom experiment mimicking Nazi Germany’s restrictive reign, in order to push his students to question higher authority before blindly following their regulations. After reading The Wave, I was encouraged to allow myself to contemplate whether regulations were sensible, and confidently protest those that were