Personal Narrative: The Tack Room

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.

The Festival return to Greenfield, MA after being in Turner Fall, MA for a couple of years. I had never been in the Art Block, but found one of their stages The Wheelhouse one to be inmate setting like you what you might find in a coffeehouse. I heard Julia Cira sing on that stage and she had a beautiful voice. One that I like much better than Rosie Porter. It's just a good one to have for ballads. Its a strong one. She plays an electric guitar as well as sings. She was accommodate by a man on drum set and another young woman on an electric guitar. That woman played it well. I listen to her sing a couple of songs and she sang beautifully each time. According to her, They were doing full on rock songs and they sound like very nice quality

“Casey, your group needs to do the stunt one more time!” coach said imprudently. It happened March 26, 2015; it was at the end of a two hour practice. During the summer months in South Georgia, it is utterly hot and humid, especially in our cheer gym (a warehouse with no air conditioner); it only has two heavy-duty fans and a roll-up door. With this in mind, my group became slightly irritated. Everyone was exhausted; nevertheless we still had to do the stunt anyway.

My field experience was in Ms. Felkins third grade classroom at Washington Elementary School. The class there are nineteen students total, nine boys and ten girls. There are two different ethnic groups in the class, four African American students and fifteen white students. Additionally, there are three students who go to a resource room throughout the day for academic instruction. One of the students goes to the resource room for thirty-minute increments throughout the day. Three students go to a small reading group each day to work on reading skills.

With the darkness of evening now in place, the illumination of the many candles that adorn my bedside table renders the need for electricity as obsolete. I will soon surround myself with covers of rich hues and music boasting a classical genre. This peaceful surrender to the brightness of the day serves as a prelude to the slumber that will soon arrive. So, I wish everyone a night filled with the sweetest of dreams and a Monday morning that dawns full of hope and eagerness for the week ahead!

There is something hypnotic about an empty stadium after a home win. It’s simply so quiet. But the atmosphere is electric. Like the air itself has a pulse. Like I can still feel the eager thrill of the crowd on my skin, the adrenaline from his home runs maddening the heart of us all. It’s unhinging. I have to admit it’s intoxicating. Like the world is at my feet and in these quiet moments I can do whatever I want, be whoever I want. Maybe a bolder girl, or braver; perhaps selfless and fearless.

My wrists burned terribly and the stinging pain seemed to rivet through my entire body. I didn't mind it though,it gave me a sense of being alive, a sense of that somewhere in the midst of this all, I'm still human and even thought I feel dead, I know I'm not.

Kate, a professional rider, had three horses lined up for me to ride. The first was a young mare, about eight years old, a well muscled chestnut with plenty of competition experience. I rode her up into the grassy field beside the barn. Kate instructed me on this horse for about 20 minutes.

“Who thought the baptism water would be as cold as an ice bath?” Much like anyone growing up in Las Vegas, or otherwise known as “Sin City,” we have always been surrounded by people from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Those people are commonly known as “Mormons.” Boy, let me tell you, there are Mormons everywhere in Vegas! There was always something about them that made me interested. There was a light as bright as the sun that always shined from them. They always had a smile on their face, from ear to ear and once you start talking to them I found that they are the nicest people. I then got to know and started hanging out with the Mormons. I then became interested with the religion aspect.

“There is a house in New Orleans, they call the Rising Sun, it’s been the ruin of many poor boys, and God I know I’m one”

I walked into the plain, white room, and although I was with six other people I had never felt more alone than at that moment. I didn’t belong in a place like that, and I felt how out of place I was. There were two colored benches, against two of the walls in the room. The man whom had led us into the treacherous place demanded that we sat and waited for further instructions. On the bench, to the left, all seven of us had taken a seat and, without speaking a word to one another, we waited. I remember thinking to myself, “I’m not like these people, I’m 19 years old. What in the hell am I doing in this godforsaken hellhole?”

The day was August 1st, 2013. Summer was coming to an end and fall was close at hand. However, on this particular day, I paid no mind to the changing season. Hundreds of people strolled the hospital hallway, their voices echoing the long pale corridors like distant hums. Despite the outside chatter, my room encompassed a certain stillness. I had always associated stillness with serenity, but this stillness was made up of apprehension, hopefulness, and most notably, fear. As I sat on a bed meant for sick patients, I looked around the small confines of the white room to my family. Within each of them I saw panic; I saw the fear of losing me. After what seemed like a lifetime suspended within a cruel dream, the doctor finally entered the room.

When I first started doing my field experience last semester, I thought it was going to be easy dealing with children for a couple of hours a day. I was wrong though. Dealing with children who just got out of school, and who have been there for eight hours, was sometimes a handful. Last semester, it was difficult, but this semester was a little bit easier. My students were better, my availability to go was better, and it was a better experience this semester. These students showed me many more aspects that there is to teaching, and it was such a memorable experience being a tutor for two semesters.

Nervously I glanced around the room after 15 minutes of brainstorming on my laptop; No one has yet finished; What a relief both for me and our team. We have to triumph on this one as it leads to more opportunities than ever before. We know that we are close to finding the solution; the perfect algorithm to solve the problem we are given. At that point the room was full of competition, starting from high school students like me to senior university students in a group of four who were racing to crack the obstacle ahead of us. We must figure out where the erroneous section is from 1000 lines of code using our own debugger. At first it seemed like an impossible task considering we were just getting acquainted both with the concept and one other.

    On Sunday, March 12th of 2017, I had my first interview with Dr. Isaac Siew, an Emergency doctor, who works in Amarillo, Texas at Baptist Saint Anthony’s Hospital. Mr. Siew and I discussed many of the major topics of Emergency medicine such as, the risks of being an Emergency Doctor, the pros of being an ER doctor, what skills one should have prior to being an Emergency Doctor, and what one does in Emergency Medicine. With each question I gained more and more information on the career that I love, and saw a new point of view on Emergency Medicine.