Reflection
I chose this topic because I often see family members and people in my community that are afraid of police officers and the criminal justice system which I didn’t understand because I taught that they were there to protect us. So I wanted to look deeper into this and why minorities saw the criminal justice system as an enemy and this topic of racial disparities was the topic that would allow me to do that. Working on this project was difficult because of my poor management skills. I actually started working on the project one week before it was due when we were given a month. I spent about 7-8 hours every day this week in school and out of school. When conducting the research and writing the paper I often ran into the problem and frustration of not finding sources that I specifically needed. I had an idea of exactly the points I wanted to write about, but the resources held me back a little bit, but after I was able to find a good source the writing of the paper became easier and smoother. Some factors that also slowed me down was trying to balance this project with baseball and also preparing for prom. After finishing a game I was so exhausted that I wouldn’t work on my project, but in the last week I was fortunate enough that most of my games got canceled because of the rain that allowed me to finish the project. I didn’t necessarily work with a partner, but I did get constant feedback and help from my peers and I found it extremely helpful when talking about our projects because from talking to them I would receive great ideas to embed in my project. My original goals were to learn more about the criminal justice system because I will be majoring in criminal justice next year so my goals were accomplished. The “stretch” for me was actually researching. I have always had a hard time writing out a well-researched paper but I feel like I did well this time and I had lots of research that supported my argument strongly. I would give myself a high B or low A because although I did feel like I wrote well thought out arguments and explained my ideas well, I rushed this project which affected the quality of it because I feel like I could have made my ideas more concise and polished. The skills I feel I have mastered is the durability to actually write out a paper or mini essays and also the embedding of citations and connecting them with my personal taught. The skills I feel I need work on is time management and knowing how much evidence to have and not letting evidence take over my paper. The advice I would give to a student next year is use your time wisely because when you let things pile up you don’t perform as well and it causes you to stress out. Also to really take the time to take this project seriously and put your best effort into it because it is your last assignment of high school and it will show you and your teachers if you really are ready for college.