At the end of my senior year, I was allowed the opportunity to shadow a profession that interested me. This “Senior Project” as my school called it, is designed to provided applicable seniors with the opportunity to explore their individual interests and career opportunities with a professional, or employee in that profession. For my project I decided to shadow Detective Sargent Dan Kalk, from the Aurora Police Department, in hopes I would gain experience with the court systems, while also learning more about what a typical work day looks like for an officer. The image above was taken at BCI, also known as The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. There, I was given a tour of the Firearms and Tools Unit, the Chemistry Labs, the Instruments Lab, Prints Lab, DNA Lab, and the Cyber Crime Unit. It was a very informational tour, and an amazing experience. This photo, is myself in a mock crime scene, set up for one of the classes this agency offers.
This experience is important to me, because it helped solidify what I hope to study in college. I always knew that I was interested in criminal justice, and criminology, however before this project I thought I wanted to study forensic psychology. After the two weeks concluded, I knew that I wanted to be more hands on while working on cases. My plans for the future are to study psychology and criminal justice, and possibly do an internship within the field.
This past summer, I participated in my church’s mission trip. My family and I have been going on these trips for the past four years, but this past year was especially special. We traveled to Arizona, stayed on a Native American Reservation, voluntarily helped out their community, all while also learning about the history of the lands. Even though the trip was only a week, I learned and experienced so much, that I came back a whole new person.
One of the projects that I was part of, was tearing down an abandoned house. This was very emotional for all of us, because the family had quite literally got up and left. As you can see in this picture, I was in charge of getting all of the trash put into trash bags and out of the house, (The house was filled, and I mean filled, with trash). As we were digging through, we started to find pictures of family members who had lived in the home. This really opened my eyes to how special life truly is, and how much we really don’t know about people. It felt like we were invading these peoples personal lives, which is why I find it so important to me. Finding something as small as pictures of people, had such a big impact on how I view life. I go into everyday thinking about what people go through, and what they most likely aren’t telling us.