Walking Chicago
Immersion week felt like it prepared me and my classmates for the upcoming school year. No matter where you come from, Chicago is a large city that can sometimes be overwhelming. However, immersion week really familiarized us with the city, the story behind it, and its current state. The first picture is very common in the city and relates back to school and immersion week. Like construction, we will work on certain things and improve stuff where it is needed. Developing and improving is pretty much construction for your self, which is important to do. This day we saw a lot of construction and made me think about when I would see construction in the city when I was younger.
The second picture was of the first day of immersion week and it represents how I felt the first day. Wearing the wrong shoes while walking long distances made my feet hurt. This made me pretty uncomfortable for most of the first day, and I focused a little less on my surroundings. Besides this, we walked to over to the lake. The lake was very nice to see because it was a warm day and many people were having fun. Being able to see this was refreshing and made the day a bit more fun. It did not feel like I was stuck in class, I was just experiencing the city.On this day, I took note of a lot of the wildlife we saw on the way during our walk because it is something I did not usually pay attention to. It is refreshing to take in what is around you instead of just walking somewhere and not taking the time to look around.
The final picture is actually the first picture I took during immersion week. At the start of the class, I did not really understand how to focus only on my surroundings. At first, this made me just look around and think I was just looking at things I have already seen a million times. But I never really took the time to appreciate what I have around me. This picture was meant to represent “reflection” which it does literally, but quite poorly. This beginning was good to have because I was able to notice a large change in how much I pay attention to what is around me and what it means. There are a lot of things I definitely missed during the walks, even though I was only trying to focus on my surroundings. This represents how fascinating and complex the city is as a whole. There are many ways the city can be looked at and leaves a lot up for interpretation. This is where we fill in our images of Chicago through what we see and notice about where we are.
