Imagine John Lennon told you that you were the greatest musician to ever live. Imagine if Martin Luther King Jr. considered you an inspiration to an entire country. Imagine Brett Favre calling you the greatest football player of all time. How would you feel if you found out that your hero considers you to be a hero? The majority of people will never know this feeling. Yet, I have been fortunate enough to experience this extraordinary event.

We arrived in the early morning with a truck full of living supplies. It was the summer before seventh grade and the first time I had seen a college campus. The university grounds were crawling with students enjoying their first few hours of college life. Many of them were playing pick-up games of football or tossing around a frisbee. This was the last thing I had expected to see at a place where students came to study a particular profession. Of course, I could still sense a level of maturity.

The idea of college rarely crossed my mind. I breezed through school with straight C’s and didn’t give much effort in any of my classes except for math. In my spare time I would make my own equations or have one of my two older sisters try to stump me with problems they concocted. This is when I first realized how much of an inspiration my eldest sister, Katy, was to me. At the top of her class with remarkable grades, she participated in band, National Honors Society, and several other clubs. Katy was my hero.

I had been dragging furniture and boxes up flights of stairs into a dorm room for hours and we were finally done. We loaded up the truck and started saying our goodbyes. Most brothers would be delighted to get rid of their older sisters, but I was miserable. Who was going to give me ridiculous nick-names? Who was going to yell at me for hogging the bathroom in the morning? Who was going to stump me with imaginary math problems?

When we returned home, I instantly hopped on the computer because like most teens, I wanted to check my Myspace. I stumbled upon Katy’s profile and to my surprise, listed under her “heroes” section she had written, “My little brother Beau. He is smart and has a great taste in music. He is an inspiration to me, and definitely my hero.” I had never felt so motivated in my entire life. Not only did I not want to disappoint Katy, but I also didn’t want to disappoint myself.

John Lennon and Martin Luther King Jr. are long-gone. And I have never met Brett Favre. But I have lived the majority of my life with someone who has impacted me as a person and as a scholar. I consider this person to be my hero. Unfortunately, I did not realize this until she had moved on in her life.