Ayla's Concentration/Senior Project

       I think that participating in the social justice concentration will really help me in college and  beyond. I learned a lot of important skills such as writing an annotated bibliography, correctly  citing sources, synthesizing my research, and supporting my claims with evidence. In college, I will have to manage my time wisely in order to get all of my work done while living even more  independently. If I were to do my concentration again I would have definitely started writing my  paper earlier. It was hard to manage being gone in the winter and having the paper due in the  spring. Therefore, I think I should have started writing this past fall. However, having to grind  this spring taught me a lot about how I work best. I learned that writing a twenty page paper is  not as daunting as it seems as long as you break it into manageable chunks. This is an important  lesson because any type of work can be broken into chunks...

 Today after going to breakfast I went to the library with Kingsley. I had to write my entire ten page narrative reflection paper today so it was a busy day. Here is an excerpt from my reflection: Although I doubted myself at first, I am really proud of all the work I did to get to this point. Above all, researching prosecutorial immunity further confirmed my interest in criminal justice. I am going to study political science in college in order to possibly pursue a career in law in the future. I know that I want a career where I can help people while still doing work that keeps me engaged. One of my future goals is to intern at a criminal justice organization. 

 Today was a busy day. I woke up early to go to the gym with my friend. After that I went to the auditorium to watch Emily's presentation. It was really cool to see all the accumulation of her work come together! After that I went back to prepare for my presentation to Mel's culture and conflict class. At 1:30 it was time for me to present. I was really nervous but it was reassuring to see some familiar faces in the audience along with my mentor John and advisor Mel. At first I was super nervous but as I started talking I got more comfortable. I was am so familiar with prosecutorial misconduct and wrongful convictions that it was easy to fill the time. I felt really good about all the work I have done to get me to this point. 

Today was another eventful day in the concentration process. After going to breakfast I headed to the library with the usual squad (Emily, Olivia, and Kinglsey). We all had presentations coming up so we grinned together. I worked on my keynote presentation for my  public demo. I essentially took all of the information from my paper and dispersed it into different slides. I also found educational videos to present along with my slides. In the afternoon we had tennis practice and then we went to the gym. After that I went to watch Olivia's public demonstration in the chapel. 

I started off the week second guessing why I was doing a capstone paper in the first place. It felt like a daunting process, one that I had to muster the motivation to finish. However, I knew I was running towards the finish line. I was so close! I buckled down in the library and set up the work I knew I had to get done for the week. My paper was in a good place, but the organization was scattered. I met with my mentor, John Bouton who helped me make an outline for the organization of my paper. After this I was able to reorganize the information in a more comprehensive way. I also added titles to the paper to make it flow better for readers. After that was done it was time for me to write my conclusion. I struggled with this step because I knew I had to synthesize all the information I had discussed in my paper. I worked with the writing lab and Kristen Nesbitt and finally finished my conclusion and the rough draft to my paper. I also worked with my dad who gave me some really construc...

This morning I went to the library again to continue working on my presentation. I am making a keynote presentation summarizing the ideas in my paper. After getting some good work done it was time to head to lunch. We were all sad to find out that Dublin had canceled last minute so we wouldn't have our senior match. Luckily Mel planned a fun green and white show down up on the courts. I played doubles! It was so sunny out it felt like summer. After tennis we went swimming in the river. All in all a fun and productive day on the books.