My institutional education started at Alcuin Montessori School when I was six years old. I stayed there for three years, with my first teacher Mrs. Nakayama. It was at her recommendation that I spent a second year repeating my third year of school. However the prices of relocating from Chicago to Oak Park, meant that my parents asked that we try the public system. For my younger sister and me, it was a complete failure and we went back to Alcuin the next year. I remained there for my fifth and sixth years of school, although I skipped sixth "grade". I had a wonderful time in Junior High School, with class sizes of around eight students between sixth, seventh and eighth grades. This is the time when I started to enjoy school more; it proved a tremendous resource to me. Whether conducting quadrangle studies at the Fermi Lab old growth prairies, or learning geographical history from a Native American in Wisconsin, these years are some of the most academically memorable years I have previous to High School.
The land of Ernest Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright. Oak Park and River Forrest High School. Twenty-eight thousand students and more at times. My father is a custodian there; my mother worked as a security guard, the faculty and staff new me from them and my older sister's previous attendance. I was lost in their shadows. Their presence had cast a model of the ideal High School student. I spent what felt like three years trying to shatter that image only to find out my attempts hurt like a rubber hammer. I do not resent them for their influence, I was able to create joys that I could claim as my own; my photography and digital imagery, my award from intro to architecture, my passion and interest in geology and recognizing the impact I had on the students who admired me.
College was for me a hasty decision. I was not ready to do it, but feared the implications of a lack of action. So, I entered Green Mountain College, guided by my instincts toward a potential interest in environmental liberal arts. My feelings are mixed even in my junior year. But I still move forward; sometimes it feels, timidly following those shadows, other times, on my own as if I had a jack hammer. My geology classes; the solar panels, the environmental floor, and sustainable design.