last week

I am definitely bitersweet about project ultimately coming to an end. I really enjoyed it. My sponsor was awesome and my project was very lively and interesting. It makes me even more excited about my future. I did different taks on both Tuesday and Wednesday, so I will talk about those here.
First, my day Tuesday. I hate to say it, but Tuesday was the one day of project I actually did not enjoy. It was pretty boring. I did 2 things. First, I worked with another lawyer in the office and finding evidence and information regarding the ability of the government of Mexico in dealing with cartels and crime, to help her with an upcoming trial. Then, in the afternoon, I spent at least 2 and a half hours dilvering sipeanos in rural Ohio, also known by some as, Nobamaville. Needless to say, this was a pretty big waste of time. This is because one person had no idea what the trial was, one house was abandoned, and one company went out of business around a year ago, meaning I did all of that driving and wasted all of that gas for nothing! Oh well, at least I got to listen to some Kid Cudi on the road.
Secondly, my day Wednesday. On Wednesday I saw the beginning of a trial. It is a rather interesting case. It is about business malpractice. 2 people are accused of stealing money from each other and the company. This means that my sponsor, while being on the defense, is also somewhat acting as a prosection, because he is also trying to prove to the judge and jury that the other man did in fact steal money. The beginning of the trial was centered around discussions of money transactions, and most importantly, co worker statements. Both sides brought in 2 types of witnesses. One that would say how great of a boss their client is, and how he would never as well as could never do something like this. The other type of witness they brought in was one that hated the other side's defendent. This type of person would testify about some sort of harm that he caused him, to try to show the jury that he is the exact type of person to commit this sort of crime. Ultimately, I am not going to be able to see what happens with this trial, but I am eager to catch up with my sponsor at some point over the summer, and this will definitely be one of the questions I ask him.

Trial time

Last week I did not spend one of my days with my sponsor. Instead, I followed around a different criminal defense lawyer. The reason I did this was because he had a trial going on. Basically, this is what happened. A young lady, around 22 years old I believe, was walking by herself in downtown Cleveland. She was walking down a deserted allie, where she was met by a 25 year old African American male. He told her to go with him into a garage, where he allegedly verbally abused her, and ultimately forced her to give him oral sex. He then told her to turn around and walk to the other side of the garage with her eyes closed. She refused this order over and over because she believed that if she did this, she would definitely die. Ultimately, the kidnapper "lessened" his demands to her counting to 100 before coming out. There after, she stumbled upon a family of 5 outside, and she begged for help. They gave her a phone and she called 911, in which case the authorities arrived immediately. Now, you may be asking yourself, how were they ever able to catch the man responsible? After all, couldn't he be anywhere in Cleveland? While this is true, there was a fairly important detail I left out earlier, because it is very graphic. When she was giving the man oral sex, at the end, he told her to "swallow." What happened was, she pretended to but did not, so when the police and the forensics team ultimately arrived and responded to her emergency phone call, the DNA team was able to use the sperm to find out who committed this hadious act. That happened about 7 months ago, which leads us to last week, trial day. My sponsor told me quite honestly that he has absolutely no idea why the defendent wanted this to go to trial. The woman says it was him, and DNA evidence proves it was him. Despite that, there I was sitting on floor 16 of the justice center awaiting the start of what seemed to be a very one sided trial. I watched 3 parts of the trial; the opening for the prosecution, the opening for the defense, and the cross examination conducted by the prosecution. The opening for the prosecution really tried to play at the hearts of the jury. The lawyer talked about all of the harm brought open such an innocent woman, etc. This pattern was repeated in the cross examination, in which the prosecution used this time to ask questions to the victim. There was a tremendous amount of sadness and crying, which even made me feel very emotional and inclined to send this man to prison if I was a member of the jury that day. And this also leads us to the opening by the defense. Basically, it went like this (2 parts). The lawyer said that first, remember they have the burden of proving him guilty, which is difficult to do; and second, that it was not a rape kit, it was a sex kit. All I can say is, I hope that man enjoys jail food, because I see no way he can possibly win.

A lot of really interesting things have been happening on project lately. I will talk about a few of them in this blog post.
First and foremost was the dealings between my sponsor and his client, a man named Derrick. Derrick was with a group of people whose plan was to buy marijuana, and then rob the seller and get away. To scare the dealer, 2 of them (not Derrick) brought BB guns. The end result of all of this was all 4 of them being arrested. Derrick is a nice, very well presented 20 year old Caucasion male, who also happens to be a great soccer player. His involvement in the crime was in fact extremely minimal, all he did was stand there, however, he didn't stop the crime when he clearly should have. Before his sentincing, I sat in on a meeting between my sponsor and the judge, in which they discussed their opinions on the case and the ultimate sentencing that was going to occur afterward. The judges ultimate stance was that she did not want to do anything that would cause harm to the well being of Derrick. Now what that essentially means is she does not want to do anything that may cause him to lose his job, his car, his house, among other things. However, at the same time, she wanted and needed to instill it in Derrick's mind why he should never even consider committing a crime ever again. To do this, she sentenced him to 10 total days in jail, which he would serve on the weekends for 2 days. The end result of this sentincing was one that did not harm the well being and ability of Derrick to be productive in society, but still one that sends an important message about life choices.
The second dealing I have had in the past few weeks was with a man named Paul. Paul is..interesting, very interesting, to say the least. Basically, the story goes likes this. Paul works for a man named Ryan, and they truly hate each other. Paul thought that Ryan was stealing money from him. Paul, in his brilliance, decided to not inform the authorities or anyone for that matter, but rather, decided to take the matters into his own hands, by trying to (secretly) steal money out of the cash register. So what my sponsor is dealing with is defending Paul from stealing money from his boss. This case has been going on for around 2 years, by the way. My sponsor got Paul a great deal, he needed to come up with 2 thousand dollars, and the felony would be completely dropped. However, Paul, being really really stupid, did not come up with the money, and is now a fellon. What I took away from this was do not ever be like Paul.

FINAL POST! I'M DONE!

AND MY FINAL POST IS HERE! While this post symbolizes a closing of a very interesting senior project, it is also the closing of an entire era of students. I am actually graduating. It's no longer just an intangible topic that may come up in casual conversation, no, it's real, and it's actually happening. This project has been a roller coaster ride, and has been a lot of work; much more than I expected. However, I think this project has helped me grow up a little bit more and give me a taste of what the real world is like, prepping me for my nearing college experience. Being able to have complete autonomy to explore the city and interact with citizens, completely unhindered, was a new and exciting experience for me that let me see a new side of the world. I never thought a senior project would require so much effort though. Up until this year, I had the preconceived notion that senior projects were a way for seniors to just goof off for 3 weeks and study the "physics" of working out etc. While I assume that some still go that route, the route that Claire and I took required planning, creativity, vigilance, and the ability to pivot on a dime. After planning for an entire year the project still didn't go as planned, but because Claire and I were able to pivot and meet with our proctor and adviser to come up with a new game plan, our project was still a success. If I were given the choice to redo this project, of course I'd say yes, and go about it a different way, but as it is, and as it always will be in the history of my senior project, it's flaws allowed for growth and tested my ability to bounce back when things don't go my way. And hey, that's the real world.

Wise Words From Ms. Davis

"I've noticed  trend in your blogs. You might not notice it, but you keep saying how much your project sucked, but if you look at all that you've accomplished and what you've done when you came back, in reality, you're project was a bigger success than you planned in the first place" - Ms. Davis. Ms. Davis is always the one to go to for wise words of advice, and although what she said to me today was not advice but simply some words of wisdom and incite, they seemed to him home; hence the blog post. But Ms. Davis, you were completely right. My project didn't completely, 100% suck. Even though it wasn't what I expected that definitely doesn't make it a bad experience. Coming back to the states and having to watch Quebec films and research Quebec music was more intriguing to me then, having just come from Quebec and being able to relate the separatist's movement and the other political issues to what was being sung about and what the movies were actually trying to portray  It made things seem deeper, and I understood what the movies and songs were really talking about, more than just on the surface level. So thank you Ms. Davis for making me really take a step back and reevaluate my perception of this project.

Presenting For The Juniors

So Claire and I are about to present to the Juniors and Sophomores tomorrow for the very first time, and she hasn't seen our final presentation yet. This honestly isn't a big deal. Since nor her or I will actually be "talking" we have nothing to worry about. Our presentation has our voices recorded coupled with a slide show of pictures from our trip, so it should be extremely intriguing to those who we are presenting to. Our presentation is really just our interviews and did not include anything negative about out experience, but simply what we had accomplished over the course of the trip. The students will be able to get an incite into what the separatist's movement actually is and how different the opinions of Quebecers can be (not EVERYONE in Quebec actually wants to succeed!) While some kids may not be entirely intrigued by our interviews, the pictures that we took of the city, the food we ate and all of our surroundings will surely keep them engaged! I have no doubt that this presentation wont run smoothly. It's going to go just as planned and Claire and I will, without a doubt, pass out senior project. After the interviews and the whole trip itself came to a close, I can surely say that Claire and I learned a lot about our essential question as well as ourselves, and our continent in the process.

Last Post WOO!

My last major project last week I got to work with Carolyn Herfurth again, the business development strategist with whom I attended the Women Entrepreneurs Rock the World NYC 2013 Conference. Carolyn offers a free program called "Declare Your Dare." DYD challenges people to pick a goal or a dream that they've been wrangling with and actually achieve it through her micro-steps. Carolyn then creates a forum on Facebook that the participants join where they encourage each other and offer feedback. For 21 days, Carolyn sends them out an email describing a small action for them to take that day and advice for moving forward in their dare. At the end of the challenge, she asked the participants to take a survey about their experience. Carolyn also emailed a different survey to entrepreneurs about why they became entrepreneurs and how they currently feel about their respective businesses. She asked me to analyze the responses, look for trends and make comments. Since she is so invested in her clients it's hard for her to view the data objectively as, well data. I created for her a document describing my findings (and proof to back up any generalizations I made). We then had a discussion about marketing; what people are going to be most attractive to her services and how to market to their needs. It was really interesting having these discussions and analyzing the data.