Discussion Board Reflections and Responses

Discussion Board Reflections and Responses

Sonny’s journey to a successful career is very inspiring and relatable. He desires ever to build and launch rockets as inspired by Russia’s Sputnik satellite during the space race. Characters who supported his dreams to build a career together included Sherman, O’ Dell, Roy Lee, and Quentin. In the story, Sonny and the mentioned characters are referred to as the rocket boys. Despite the differences among the group, lack of support, and mechanical problems encounters, such barriers were crucial to propel his ambitions and realize them.

To begin with, the group did not have as much support at first from other people. Sonny’s father, Homer Hickman sr., for instance, thinks that the boys should engage in something more practical. He holds that his son is not as talented to leave his mine job for an aeronautical venture. Similarly, at Big Creek High School, the principal is skeptical about Sonny’s idea. For example, in one incident, when the group presents their first rocket in school, he exclaims in a humorous way saying, “Are you boys plotting a something nefarious?’’ (Hickam 2000, 94). Nonetheless, the most significant encouragement for Sonny was to prove his teacher and father that he was smarter than they thought.

Secondly, members of Sonny’s team positively influenced him to attain his goals. Given that the group was an oddball with each one of them with a different character was vital to support his ambitions. Sherman is describing as being quiet, O’ Dell is talkative, Roy Lee is a famous joker, Quentin is brilliant while Sonny was fairly average. Their differences help them a lot to bring out the best in each of them. As such, Sonny benefits a lot in harnessing his skills to accomplish his desires. At the begging of their career, O’ Dell points that, “A rocket won’t fly unless someone lights the fuse” (Hickman, 2000, pg 105). In his words, he meant to motivate the large group, in which Sonny also drew motivation to work on his passion.

Finally, in his choice of career, Sonny encountered many difficulties. Another of the challenge was mechanical issues. At first, it was challenging to find the right material and mechanic to develop the rocket parts. Sonny knew that excelling well in mathematics would help him analyze what needs to be done. However, since he was poor in the subject, the only option was to learn it to examine distances and heights to launch a rocket. “That rocket had to have gone up at least 100 feet, didn’t it?” (Hickman, 2000 pg 64). Therefore, though handling complex mathematics at first was complicated also, Sonny learned to help apply to all his endeavors as his work required.

In conclusion, Sonny faced may barriers to his career path. However, despite the lack of support, indifferences in character with the team, and mechanical issues, he always found a way to overcome them. His aspirations gave him the strength to work towards realizing his goals.

Student Responses

Post 1

I disagree with the post that the major obstacles Sonny faced were when he fell at the railroad while trying to retrieve pipes from his rockets. I feel that Sonny endured more difficult times like the lack of support, encountering mechanical issues, and at times the lack of support. Instead, the start of his career was most difficult, considering it was the beginning of every other challenge.

Post 2

I agree with the post that one of the barriers that the boys faced was the concept of rocketry. None of them knew how to create the components of a rocket, which they later learned from different influencers. They also had to shift from their previous careers to build on a new one. For instance, Sonny had worked as a coal miner, but he dared to leave this profession for his newfound passion.