{"id":67,"date":"2023-10-09T02:44:47","date_gmt":"2023-10-09T02:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eportfolio.siue.edu\/takara-gilbert\/?page_id=67"},"modified":"2023-11-07T02:11:25","modified_gmt":"2023-11-07T02:11:25","slug":"digital-project-1-reflective-multimodal-essay","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/eportfolio.siue.edu\/takara-gilbert\/digital-project-1-reflective-multimodal-essay\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Project #1: Reflective Multimodal Essay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thriving<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I was welcomed into this world by my loving mother and father. I was born and raised in Rockford, Illinois in a decent home where I was the only child. My mother worked at home as a cosmetologist and my father was an auto worker. They both worked diligently to ensure that we lived a comfortable life. E<\/mdspan>ven though only children often \u201cget whatever they want\u201d my parents and I believed that anything I received from them was earned because I deserved it. At a young age they instilled hard work and determination inside of<\/mdspan> me so at home is where I flourished and learned the most. At home was where I learned to ride a bike, wash dishes for the first time, set the table for dinner, raked<\/mdspan> leaves in fall, and made snow angels in the winter. \u00a0My home consisted of an extraordinary trio; my mother and father <\/mdspan>that supported one another whenever we were at our best and even when we fell to our worst. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My childhood home happened to be a block away from my elementary school. I didn\u2019t attend that school until I was in k<\/mdspan>indergarten, <\/mdspan>previously I went to a private school for preschool. Since I was born prematurely, my mother was mindful about my ability to learn. She took the time to teach me at home with workbooks and flashcards. I wasn\u2019t as ecstatic about school as most kids because I was used to having just my trio anything <\/mdspan>outside the trio and a few relatives, I didn\u2019t say a word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My private school experience was short lived,<\/mdspan> I was enrolled into a public elementary school by kindergarten. \u201cMama these girls at this school look just like me\u201d I said. The representation of what a black girl looked like was important to me at a young age because I was able to relate to other black girls and make friends.  Being around others who I could relate to meant that they could understand me more than those who didn\u2019t. School was the new place where I thrived, and I was able to be myself. The elementary experience was filled with friends, cupcake parties, and difficult math problems, at least for me it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Progressing toward middle school, at the school I attend<\/mdspan>ed I was accepted in a Creative and Performing Arts program (CAPA) this is where I concentrated in theater and technical theater. Even though I had made friends and detached from my trio, I was still unexplainably shy. All my core classes were built around singing, dancing, and just being creative, but my favorite classes were my concentration classes. Theater allowed me to create an alter ego, so that even if I was terrified, I was going to act as though I was unafraid and able to conquer anything. My alter ego took a lot of time to build, but once it was there absolutely no one could take it away from me. Technical theater allowed me to learn lots of physical skills that I still enjoy in<\/mdspan>cluding operating a drill, sewing costumes, or hanging set pieces from the fly system. This program allowed me to build a community within the arts and grow and thrive as an artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting into h<\/mdspan>igh school I continued CAPA and loved every second of it, but I didn\u2019t have the same teachers, so it wasn\u2019t as enjoyable all the time <\/mdspan>because I felt like the new teachers didn\u2019t always understand my way of learning or my prior knowledge I received within my concentration. Most of the students that were in CAPA in middle school rolled on over to high school where our class had over 300 students, and our school spirit was through the roof. The instruments from the band were roaring, the crowd was cheering and wearing our school colors, cheerleaders were doing backflips, dancers were dancing their hearts out. In those moments I remember life feeling so vibrant and filled with excitement then\u2026 the monstrous pandemic of a shutdown came and took everything away. M<\/mdspan>y life during the pandemic wasn\u2019t as detrimental, it allowed me to build a closer relationship with my trio. Spending time with them made me feel like a little kid again watching Netflix movies, eating tater tot casserole, getting on zoom, and completing assignments. After the initial fear of COVID dialed down a bit m<\/mdspan>y family and I adapted and created routines that we normalized over time. As time advanced, my high school reopened, I was ready to get back to school even if it wasn\u2019t going to ever be the same as before I absolutely had to get back to it. Going back to school I was introduced to a college readiness program called Upward Bound through a nearby community college. This program allowed me to meet new people, go to new places, and have new experiences all while I was in high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This was an Upward Bound college tour in New York I<\/mdspan> captured this image in vibrance of Times Square<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Upward Bound introduced me to the idea of going to college, which was always a thought I had in mind, but never truly explored it. One of the first trips I went on with the program was a civil rights tour through Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, and Atlanta. This is where I learned a lot about black culture, enslavement, and segregation. This educational experience through museums and monuments taught me so much about the lives of black historical figures and the impact they made. In these places I was astonished by the determined souls of black people I knew a fire was blazed inside of me to make a difference and help others no matter the circumstances.  Another impactful trip was the New York, Boston, and Washington D.C. tour. We went to ivy leagues such as Harvard, MIT, and Columbia, but one thing a freshman at Harvard told me stuck with me forever \u201cI went to Harvard as an engineer major because of the hype and the legacy, but the educational opportunity at MIT would have benefitted me more.\u201d In that instance I stood in awe, how could he say that. He was in a position that other kids would love to have been in, yet there was a disconnect between the other kids\u2019 honorary achievement and the discontentment in<\/mdspan> regret he was feeling. In that moment I knew it didn\u2019t matter what direction I went in life if this was where the best opportunity for me to thrive was and it truly made me content then that\u2019s where I would be<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thriving I was welcomed into this world by my loving mother and father. I was born and raised in Rockford, Illinois in a decent home where I was the only child. My mother worked at home as a cosmetologist and my father was an auto worker. They both worked diligently to ensure that we lived […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":130,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_sb_is_suggestion_mode":false,"_sb_show_suggestion_boards":false,"_sb_show_comment_boards":false,"_sb_suggestion_history":"","_sb_update_block_changes":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-67","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eportfolio.siue.edu\/takara-gilbert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eportfolio.siue.edu\/takara-gilbert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eportfolio.siue.edu\/takara-gilbert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eportfolio.siue.edu\/takara-gilbert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eportfolio.siue.edu\/takara-gilbert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/eportfolio.siue.edu\/takara-gilbert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279,"href":"https:\/\/eportfolio.siue.edu\/takara-gilbert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67\/revisions\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eportfolio.siue.edu\/takara-gilbert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}