Personal Narrative: My Eco Map

This past year, I have been apart of Naperville Central’s brand new Special Spaces club. When my friend approached me and asked me to join, I agreed even though I had no clue what I was involving myself in. In retrospective, I can honestly say that becoming a part of Special Spaces has been one of the most meaningful, fun, and fulfilling experiences I have had in high school.

Where I come from it's taking pride in your yard, knowing every single one of your neighbors, and leaving doors unlocked because there isn’t a thing to worry about. I find comfort in that small town feel, and I am more than proud to be from good ol’ Warrenton, Indiana. Here, we are just a wee bit shy of being big enough to be on a map, but we have a name and we have town lines. Within those lines nearly two hundred people have found a home, and thanks to Mr.Dave Gruible our community is steadily flourishing. There are now three subdivisions on the rise in addition to the church, salon, family restaurant, and campgrounds that nestled into the area years ago.

On 06/19/17, a t12:00pm, I Deputy Warden N. Christian was dispatched to 3251 Miriam Drive South on an injury-possible dangerous or vicious dog. I arrived at the location and was advised by The Columbus Division of Police (CPD) that the victim is being transported to Mount Carmel West Hospital (793 W State St) for her injuries and dog owner resides at the above location. I exited my vehicle and approached the dog owner. I spoke to dog owner Alex Kriglowitz and his wife. I asked Mr. Kriglowitz what transpired. He explained he was mowing his lawn and opened the side fence to mow the side yard. His dog was in the backyard. Mr. Kriglowitz completed mowing and forgot to close the gate. Mr. Kriglowtiz went inside the house and the next thing

A social location that has affected my life is education. I chose education because I have always struggled with it throughout my middle school years. I was having tough time focusing in school. I was that child that never got awarded for anything. Instead I was always sitting at the principal’s office having meetings with teachers and my parents. Math and English weren’t my subjects I always a struggled with both, because I only grew up knowing one language which was Spanish, and Math I was never good with numbers. For not knowing good English I would get bullied and made fun of all the time. That I made me give up on school. By the time I was in sophomore in high school I was transferred to a charter school, because I need help with all the

So I called my dad since that’s who I live with and he told me he was on his way to come pick me up at work and that we were going to the hospital because my grandma called him and said the ambulance came to the house and took my mom and rushed her to the hospital in the cities. My dad couldn’t tell me what was wrong all he said was “it wasn’t looking to good for your mother”. My dad came and got me from work and we drove to the cities. We go to the hospital and every one of my family members where there a greeted me with hugs. Everyone was crying which means that things are looking good for my mom. We probably stayed at the hospital for roughly 12 hours talking to family, doctors, and praying for my mom. A lot of family friends came to hospital and or texted me or my family. A lot of people posted on my mom’s or my Facebook wall praying for us that she would get better. After being up for 21 hours, the doctors said she was in good hands for the night. I didn’t want to leave her but I needed to sleep and maybe get ready for work tomorrow. So my dad and I agreed to go home and hopefully come back in the morning, so we said good bye to my family that’s staying there the

Go back to a time, when smart phones, and laptop were as thick history textbooks. To a time when a whole gallon of gas cost a little more than a dollar. The year is 1998 and in this year I was born. I was given to a very loving mother and father, that with their extraordinary love gave me the unextraordinary name of David. I grew up in the wonderful city of El Paso, Texas.

Take a deep breath, I told myself looking in the visor mirror, just breathe. I looked to my right and droplets of water covered the passenger side window of my fathers Jeep. Two of the droplets had streamed down the window and I admired the beauty of their disarrayed paths. I compared the droplets to the bittersweet chaos that has consumed my life. Their paths had no direct course and jerked left to right slowly and then in a rush as if there were a magnet below them.

It was June 16th, 2008 and I was home with my grandma and my mom and dad came home. With a face that I have never seen before. My mom brought a baby boy named Zack. I heard my mom and dad talking about how my mom had to quit her job because she couldn’t put me in day care cause the weren’t taking care of me, and she had to take care of zack so she decided to quit her job to take care of us. Also heard my mom and dad in our small kitchen about not having space for Zachary. They had a conclusion we were going to move.

WASHINGTON — Last month I spoke on a panel here, organized by the Historical Society of Washington, about how local authors like me use “place” in our work. The building where the panel was held — the Carnegie Library, a gleaming Beaux-Arts structure gifted to the city a century ago by the industrialist Andrew Carnegie — has become the latest sign of Washington’s gentrifying times: Apple recently released plans to convert the building, long a civic space, into a lavish retail store.

Our parents began arguing a lot. We were going through a financial crisis. My mother had gambling issues, which I did not know then. The first time I saw my father cry was when my mother got involved in a car accident. She survived but her left leg was not able to function as it was before. It is difficult for her to run and the pain returns from time to time. She remained bedridden for a while and I could see her getting depressed everyday not being able to go anywhere. The second time I saw my father cry was when his sister’s husband passed away in a car accident. I did not understand what was happening at the time, they gave me the phone to talk to her but she was just sobbing. Both my parents were tearing up while me and my brother were just confused and sad because everyone was crying.

I would say distraction was one of the challenges I had to overcome to get where I am today. My friends, relationships, staying up late, watching television or doing something else rather than doing my work, would always back track me even if I thought “I’ll be okay” and just catch back up; it’s not that easy. I use to focus so much on other people in my life, I’d forget about myself and what’s best for me. When I was in the middle school, I would get so distracted by my cell phone, my mom would have a restriction on it so that I couldn’t send or receive text within school hours. Nevertheless, I didn’t understand, but now I see where it could hurt my grades.

When I visited Brown what stood out to me is an environment encouraging students to be intellectually curious, not only through the idea of creating your own major, but also through the option to take a course pass-fail. This jumped out at me as an environment I would thrive in and reminded me of my senior year. I planed on taking a work heavy internship teaching course, and doubling up on science while learning calculus, putting myself in a calculus physics class surrounded by future engineers who took calculus years ago: all summer I was slightly terrified. There are many classes like Physics that I would love to take and not be constantly anxious about grades, and that's Brown’s provides. At Brown I would take full advantage of this opportunity

I find myself influence by a variety of different social locations. When growing up what influence me the most was my ethnicity. Being a Hispanic and having to learn two languages was a barrier for me at such a young age. At home were my parents saw it as rude for my siblings and I to speak English around them, made it hard to practice. At times I would often go back and forth between the two languages. This cause me to have to take special classes in order to catch up with the other student in my grade level. Some other students unlike myself were quick to learn two language and differentiate between them. Today, I can look back and be grateful for going through that struggle since I am now a bilingual and know both languages

For me sustainability is like a family house. Since I was a baby I have known that I have to take care of it, that I have to keep it alive, just like I have to take care of the community and its surroundings. To some extent, over the years the sole fact of its existence became something obvious, something that simply has to be present. However, simultaneously, every day, I am learning that there is always something more to do, to improve the current state. For example, just like fixing a faulty roof, lately our community improved the heating system in our neighborhood – we managed to convince the board to switch from gas-based to solar-based one. Not much later we’ve gathered enough money to build new bike lanes, then to introduce new bus line,

Sustainability to me is a systems ability to continue to operate using its own resources. Most often this word seems to be used when discussing the environment. For example, soil sustainability. Modern farming techniques are literally sucking the nutrients out of our soil. The second law of thermodynamic states energy is neither created or destroyed in a system. Specifically, an isolated system such as our planet. There is and was a certain amount of energy in every field. When that energy is gone its gone until replenished. This can happen by organic matter decomposing on it, rain can bring nutrients, etc. The point I’m getting at is or planet cannot be abused. The things we have are limited. (I just wanted to add nothing in this paragraph was taken from any citable sources. This information has been learned during my time in science courses. I only added this so there was no confusion about plagiarism).