Tater Tot ~ Writing in the Disciplines

Dear Past Self,  I want you to know how far you have come since the beginning of freshman year, and even last semester, as a writer, presenter, and person. From freshman year, you were terrified of showing your work and letting teachers use your written work as examples to the class. You were shy and embarrassed of your writing, for what? I have no idea even now. However, you are not that same person anymore. You enjoy writing and sharing with others the pride you have for your work. You most defiantly strive and earn your grades.  I admire the picture above for numerous of reasons. When I saw it; I right away thought of myself. I know past self never valued the writer in her openly, but secretly she always did. This semester you have learned so much within yourself. I can honestly describe my growth as a writer as a; caterpillar throughout its stages into transitioning into a butterfly. To succeed in this class, revising, being prepared, training, communication, time ma...

The end of the semester is literally right around the corner! For our final project in class we are conducting another police report on a different set of videos. I also like these projects compared to writing an entire 5-7 page paper layout. These writing projects will actually give practice for the future, because reports are a huge part of the criminal justice system. There are many types of reports, they're are type 1, type 2, type 3, and type 4. Type 1 is the most basic and type 4 reports are the most complex. With that they're a bunch of different incidents that could result in writing a report. One incident could have multiple reports to it. From doing these projects I have been learning the difference of these reports though they might seem similar. Type 1 reports solely records facts. It is not an arrest, it's all facts from witnesses, victims, and suspects. This would include incidents of a missing person and non-violent incidents. Type 2 is the exact same as type...

Lately we been spending time with the textbook and getting into groups to write up proper written reports for our mock trials, our past project of different reports for Law Enforcement, and now we have started a new project of using non-fiction clips of lawn enforcement incidents, and basing a whole report as we were the officers on duty. We have to write a report on any of the 4 types of written reports offered and basically tell the story to the "public". With that we have include all information but try to be as concise as we can. Concise and gets to the point. I like how we have to use our imagination and practice typing these types of reports so that we can avoid grammar errors and avoid huge conflicts/s scandals in the future. I really like how again we're not individually writing a report or writing a 5-7 page paper on a incident. I think it's more efficient to work together and write the report together so that we can teach each other and learn from one anothe...

I'm so surprised that I survived this week! This past week and the upcoming week is my finals week and I literally stayed up for three days out of the week. I was definitely sleep deprived. All I was looking forward to this week was straight sleeping! All my finals are these two weeks instead of actual finals week. Which I don't mind because I'm done earlier compared to everyone else but all my finals, plus extra homework assignments and projects are around the same time. I been crazy stressed lately and I know summer break is around the corner but it seems so far far away! I just know when the time does come I'm going to cherish every second of it. All I want to is to work crazy this summer, not worry about any classes or homework!, and just get to see all my friends and family. Also I need to do some serious soul searching this summer. I come to the decision that my passion does not lie in the criminal justice path and I know that's pretty ironic since this class ...

So it's finally Friday! Such a short week but I don't think I could of handled another day of school! However, today's classes went by fast and good, despite the very windy weather. Today in class we finally had our first mock-trials of interrogations and I could honestly say that they went successful! I never witnessed or participated in mock trials, it was offered at my high-school but I never took interest. I was honestly so nervous and started having cold feet because I thought it wasn't gunna be effective. I thought that we wouldn't be able to get a confession or even any evidence dealing with the prompt. Basically I didn't know how the turn out would be which discouraged me. However, what a complete surprise! The interrogations and interviews were extremely funny! It was such a fun new activity to take part in. I'm glad that though this is a writing course it is not writing papers right after another. Instead, Dr. Kyburz really tries to go the extra mi...

Well... I ended up not going to Florida and it was a real bummer! I was flying standby and the flight before mine ended up having maintenance issues, causing a 2 hour delay! Which mean't that my flight was delayed, which meant there was no open seats! The next day was raining and had the same turn up of having no available seats so I was stuck in the Windy city for the remainder of break. It wasn't all too bad, though yes sun would of been great! With a trip to Disney, but I had my own fun here at home. On Friday, it was my boyfriend's aunt's 50th birthday bash! It was a banquet and it was a huge blast. On Saturday I met up with friends in the morning and went to the Frida Room restaurant on the South side and it was so so good! After we went to a coffee shop right across the street and it was hands down the best coffee I ever had. It was coffee and hot chocolate mixed. Then I rushed home to get ready to meet my other group of friends down at Loyola to watch the game! I...

Blubaugh's short film reveals productive thoughts about the nature of memory by bringing in the concept of fear. The short film talks about Andy's fear and how it affected his memory. Andy has had rituals that he has done since he was little such as; aligning his feet with the floor board, and rearranging the magazines so they don't touch the end of the coffee tables since he was about seven years old. Andy had said that he knew doing these little things wasn't going to make him any safer but at least he was doing something that made him feel better. Andy was violently jumped and attacked by five individuals. Andy was so scared he decided to give them his wallet and bag so that they would leave him alone. Andy was left extremely traumatized. As a result, Andy had to pick and choose what he would be afraid. Every time Andy saw a African American man and he is not feeling right about it, he would remove himself from the situation, such as crossing the street and getting ...

Well we finally finished our narrative and though it was a struggle to get done, I think it was an important topic. I never had to write on why I chose to go into law enforcement, this was the very first time, and as a classmate had said yesterday in class, if I was ever asked that question during an interview I would be looking stupid just sitting there struggling to come up with an answer. I'm not very good with coming up with answers out of the blue, which is definitely a weakness I wish I did not have. But, I also think it's cool that we're gunna be working from a textbook for awhile now, it's a nice switch from paper after paper; I also feel like my brain cannot produce anymore papers lol. Im convinced my brain is fried. I also heard we are gunna be doing some mock trials and I don't know how I feel about that lol; I never been a fan. We had mock trials in high-school and it would be cool to watch or hear about it but I never thought about giving it a try, but ...

A recap of spring break in one word is horrific. Taking out your wisdom teeth is torture and I recommend to just keep yours in and deal with it. I had mine taken out on Monday and it is now Saturday and I still can't eat properly. I had about the worst break ever, doing nothing but laying in bed, sleeping, and eating pudding from Monday through Friday. Monday was the absolute worst day by far, once my mouth was not numb anymore the pain was unexplainable. My medicine wasn't ready for over 2 hours so within that time I was a baby I will admit it. I mean it was nice having my mom baby me but I will never want to relive this moment again. I couldn't even do much of my homework because I was way too weak to concentrate, which was a huge bummer because I planned on getting way more work done then I did. Friday came and I finally decided to try to eat real food and get out of the house. Boy, was it a mistake. Eating could be done but only very very slowly and carefully. I lost a ...

Hang on in there...one more day! I cannot wait to do absolutely nothing. I don't remember the last time I had a weekend with absolute no work. The only downside is that my teeth hurt way too much! I'm trying to push this surgery sooner than Monday. More and more people are telling me stories about their experience getting their wisdom teeth out and I'm kinda freaked out. I just don't know how bad I'm going to take the pain. However, this weekend looks like complete sunshine and over 50 degrees, I'm excited to use my new camera and go around the city taking pictures. I'm catching up with all my work and I will soon be stress free for a bit! My narrative is coming along, once I actually sat down and really thought about the purpose and what drove me towards law enforcement in the first place, it was smooth sailing from there. I'm working on adding dialogue to make it more story-like. This was actually so much more difficult for me then a regular narrative....

I never had a problem with writing, yeah I procrastinate who doesn't? But once I had an intro I'm all set, I could just keep writing and writing. Narratives are probably one of the easiest pieces of papers to write. There's no right or wrong way, you simply write about you, and no one knows you better than you. Narratives are my favorite, I can usually come up with a story right away that fits the prompt. However, this narrative has me completely stuck. It's just very intimating to me. I think it's the question that's intimating to me, "why did you decide to go into Law Enforcement?" It's a question that I know the answer to because of past experience but I just can't get the right wording out of me. I'm a double major in two completely different subjects, yet they both aim to help the lives of people. For Law Enforcement it's to promote the common good. For Science and Exercise Movement it's for the health of the people. I am born ...

I think everyone can agree with me that group projects are not really their cup of tea. In grade school it was a fun way to work with your classmates/best-friends that you have known since pre-k. In high-school it was a good easy project, yet your older and it can still get annoying because a lot of students are lazy. However, in college I don't really prefer it because I enjoy doing assignments on my schedule and that's usually right away. I like starting on my assignments as soon as my classes for the day are over, just because I like getting everything out the way. It saves me a lot of stress and worrying. However... I don't really mind this project because it's a nice break from your typical 3-5 page paper. I sometimes forget that there are other ways to present a paper other than just typing it out. The topic of this paper was a bit confusing for me just because I feel like I should be giving more information but at the same time it seems like I am covering everyth...

Hoping everyone is just as excited for this day off! I just woke up an hour ago and it has already been the perfect start! Im catching up on a bit homework so I don't leave everything till the last minute but we'll see how much I get done.. Today is defiantly looking like a sledding day😊  The only downfall to all this snow is driving! I'm stuck on campus and desperately want food! Also, buy some extra sleds. It was a pretty stressful week with multiple papers due for multiple classes, multiple quizzes, and multiple exams that are being pushed off too next week! I was so excited to get pass all these tests but I have a feeling everything is going to be due the same day next week😩  I love having an extra day off just as much as the next person but I desperately want/need summer! We just started this semester and I'm more stressed than all my last 3 semesters put together.. I would say history stresses me out the most! I absolutely hate history because I am so bad at it,...

I provided the trailer to "The Hunting Ground" by director Kirby Dick and producer Amy Ziering. This film is incredibly interesting to watch yet very tragic. I almost felt embarrassed for all the victims and the universities because I would not want to be apart of a school that did not want to represent me on their behalf. The documentary is raw and depressing but reveals the truths that everyone is entitled to know. On a previous post I stated that this film was released in 2015 and here we are in 2018 and the issue of sexual harassment is as big as ever! Talking about rape and harassment is like walking on eggshells, everyone has to be extremely careful of what they say, especially those expose to the media today. I think it is extremely powering that victims and supporters are coming together to have a voice for all those that still struggle to get out of their situations. I know there are those who are tired of hearing about the scandals but shouldn't it be common ...

1. Was there a specific scene that got to you?  I would say that the entire documentary is very moving and overall filled with sadness and pain because I hurt for these young women. However, a scene that greatly impacted myself would have to be when the numbers of how many colleges report sexual assault appeared. In 2012, 45% of colleges do not report a single one sexual assault occurred. 88% of women sexually assaulted on campus do not report. Think about those statistics... pretty sad isn't it? The best years of your life can quickly turn into your worst nightmare with no support or concern from anyone. Claire Bond Potter, a former associate professor at Wesleyan University admits that it is not that an administrator wants a student to be harmed but their priority is to protect the university from being harmed. Melinda Manning, a former assistant dean of students from UNC- chapel hill, also admits that an administrator has to make it difficult for students to report so that t...

1. Claims require evidence This concept is best described in my own words as any idea that needs factual evidence too support that it is true. Making a claim without any factual evidence to support it makes the claim unreliable and "too" extraordinary. An example of how I needed to require evidence to support my claims is through my analysis papers. In college writing 2 I wrote a paper on the quality of food on college campuses, and in this paper I gave my input on the struggles of being a resident student when it comes to health and how so many other students at various of universities struggle with the same issue. I had to give evidence to support my claims which I did through a scholarly article that included charts and recorded studies on this issue.  2. Meaning has context This concept explains how meaning represents more than just what is being said, it provides an underline or "hidden" message that requires deeper thinking to it. I executed this conc...