My boyfriend is a stoic. And for the life of me, I’ve been trying to figure out what that means. Whenever he talks about politics, stringing confusing sentences together about working class theory, he finishes it with, “But what do I know? I’m just some guy.”

My search for stoicism was ignited at this camp on the astonishing challenge course. On the first day everyone was encouraged to climb this wooden structure, with only rope and a large carabiner-looking thing holding us up.

My brain kept screaming, “You’re gonna fall. You’re gonna fall and become a pile of goop.”

While I was in the air, watching my (thrifted) sambas blur, I thought about how irrational fear could be. This impulse trying to keep me safe also was keeping me from crossing the rope ladder and from success.

Yet, consciously, I knew I was safe. The harness digging into my torso would stop me from falling to an untimely death.

A line appeared in my head that stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger wrote, “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”

I realized, like in stoic philosophy, I played an active role in my suffering. It depended on how much I decided to believe my fears.

I started to carry this logic over to the rest of camp, birthing the “challenge course ideology.” I’ll tell myself I won’t fall completely off, even if I struggle at first.

I started to flourish. As the week went on, and the campers got comfortable, so many precious moments came to fruition.

From shouting “reasons to live” in the game concentration to laughing to “The Lorax” soundtrack, I managed to ignore that fear that controlled so much of my life.

I’d be lying if I said the entire week was easy. I made mistakes, food-related, that reminded me of my stoic challenge course ideology. First was a severe caffeine crash from drinking too much lavender coffee during our interviews; the second mistake was grabbing an unnecessary— highly revered — chicken caesar wrap.

It was from this, rather phantasmagorical tasting, caesar wrap that I learned a valuable lesson.

There I was, sitting in the Orange Media Lab on the floor, caesar wrap laid out in front of me, taunting me. Facts about food waste played throughout my head, but instead of ruminating over my mistakes, I tried to ask myself what to make of the leftovers.

Instead of focusing on everything out of my control, stoicism asks, what can I learn from this?

Aurora, my RA, and I made light of the waste by cracking jokes and tossing the caesar wrap around the room. While I considered eating it, by the time we were done, it was too warped to be properly ingested.

As I threw away my soggy chicken wrap, I learned a valuable lesson: to cut out what’s not necessary from my life, and to not get listeria at camp.

Stoicism has praxises that intersect with good journalism: humility, a moral code and courage. The thing that I like about the journalists I’ve met is how relatable they are. That there are simply people behind the corporate news organizations.

Writing is such a vulnerable thing; it’s a way to transport information, yes, but also a window into someone’s internal world. I get self-critical, anxious and that fear of falling is overwhelming.

When the world can feel so overwhelming at times — when you have 57 pages of transcription to go through weird robots on the campus or access to too much caffeine — I remind myself it’s in my imagination.

And after this camp, I have a harness: a group of friends who are here to support one another, lessons learned and hope of succeeding in the journalism industry.

I have to remember when it comes to writing, “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” But what do I know? I’m just some guy.

-- Charlie Bloomer, Sandy High School

This story was produced by a student reporter as part of the High School Journalism Institute, an annual collaboration among The Oregonian/OregonLive, Oregon State University and other media organizations. For more information or to support the program, go to oregonlive.com/hsji.