Reflection
I chose my topic because of my former mentee, he would get into a lot of trouble and seemed to not care and feel apathetic to what cold have happened to him. I have worked for weeks, I want to stress that the time you are given may not be enough. I have had eight extra weeks to work on my action plan and it was with very tight schedules that it may become very frustrating. I had a lot of help from my mentor Clarence Waldron from Columbia College who helped me get amazing interviews with professionals. I manage my time by not going to school if I needed the time, staying after school every possible second that I could, and really caring about the topic. I did reach my original goal, my article will be published in 60,000 copies of the R_WURD Magazine and distributed throughout the city of Chicago. I would grade my self on a pass or fail as a pass because the effort put into this project has become part of my daily life for the past two and a half months. I think I have learned much about the juvenile justice system and the have improved in interviewing and writing. I am most proud of being able to complete the Columbia Links program and also being invited as an investigative reporter this upcoming summer. A difficulty was time management, but with Ms. Hogan's help I was able to schedule my day even if it was a tight schedule. What I would change of my project would be, having more interaction with the reader so the website is more enjoyable. I changed my central question from a broader topic when I got my first interview. Research from UCLA was of great help, as well as Project Nia. Work on the Fire project before they tell you to start, if you are working with an organization the topic could include them; don’t forget to explore topics.