Link to my final project 

One of the two most influential ideas I encountered was how covid has effected homeless and impoverished people. I never think about the homeless too much or too carefully, but an eye – opening article revealed that not only has covid forced more people out of employment and onto the streets, but death tolls have greatly increased from anywhere between 30 – 70% due to the increase in homeless shelters. Another fact that was interesting to me is that in the TED Talk I selected, Becky Blanton stated that homelessness is a mindset, not necessarily a state of being. While many of us often define home as a permanent stucture of some sort, without us, it is simply a house. A home is anywhere or any area you choose to call yours.

I know my project is not the most unique. A stigma that used to be attached to the homeless and impoverished is rapidly dissipating already, but hopefully this project will aid in that – dissapating a stigma towards unfortunate individuals.

I have learned that I am a serious procrastinator. However, some advice I would give to seniors and myself is that projects really don’t take that long; while they could be knocked out in two dreadfully long nights, it would be much easier to write small chunks over the course of a week or two. I have been both in and out of our community at North, and I have learned that it is a very supportive one. This seems to be the case for most of the Naperville area, so I hope it carries over into my experiences at COD. I have also been really, REALLY, out of this community, and went to England between my freshman and sophomore years. Aside from doing research in all my classes, I got to see a different portion of the world. It was different in ways you would notice as not quite home, but as far as the rest of the world goes, England is probably going to be the closest to the US that your’e going to get. In a nutshell, the world is a vast and different place, and I think we need to respect our differences, and in some cases, agree to disagree.

Future advice, other than chunking out projects, may be to look into jobs. Not necessarily ones that you are going to go to college for, or ones that you want to have for a lifetime. Ones that you can hold durring your highschool and college years, to become self – reliant. I already made a big necessary purchase – a car. And among other outstanding purchases, I am quickly approcahing money I could by a motorcycle with. But while pay is nice, don’t work too hard out there – no matter what you’re doing.