Intership Readiness

The qualities of someone who is internship readiness, is someone who has grown on their growth areas. This may include participation in class, being active and a leader, and also completing work in class. I plan on demonstrating my internship readiness by continuing to be on time to every class, not earn any infractions this module and also be actively ready to participate in class. For example I would ask questions on things I don't know, being more responsible with following up with my instructors on my growth areas that I can improve on. Also I would be emailing my advisor more about what can I do more to prepare myself for my internship and my future. The changes I will make this module is organizing my binders, having more energy in class, and soaking in all the information I am learning and apply it to my internship and other future jobs.

Best/Worst Job

The best job I’ve ever had was volunteering at the Dunsmuir in Oakland California. The Dunsmuir was a historic Mansion built back during slavery, the mansion was owned by the White Europeans, and slaves were kept upstairs and were servants to their masters. My position there was a personal assistant event planner, and what I did there was plan for weddings, proms, receptions, and concerts. I had multiple responsibilities such as making sure our customers had tickets for which ever event at the ticket booth, making sure tables were set nicely for the weddings in our pavilion, cleaning the bathrooms, and setting chairs outside for outside events. The mansion was set for Christmas activities for the children and adults to come out and watch movies. This job was so enjoyable because I was volunteering with my sister and a guy named Chris. We had the most fun anyone could have at a job. During someone’s reception my sister and I would be dancing on the grounds to the music while putting up the chairs. My co-worker Chris would take me on a ride every night on his Suzuki Motorcycle to check the grounds. I developed my communication skills, learning how to be patient, and working at a faster pace. It was a very ephemeral job, but I really enjoyed it.

The worst job I’ve ever had was working at senior home as a waitress. My responsibility was taking orders, bringing out food, and cleaning up the kitchen. I disliked this job because elderly people can become a little mean and have their days and dealing with this it interfered with my work ethics. I’ve dealt with this because I had to make money, so out of this work experience I learned how to communicate with words and what words are appropriate to use in a work environment.

Rivera's Mural and the Occupy Movement

The connection between Rivera’s Frozen Assets mural connects to the Occupy movement today because the middle picture Rivera drew is mainly homeless people who don’t have enough to survive, and those who had jobs lost them, and now are being kept in a homeless warehouse. Then going back to the Occupy movement that’s going on today, every day when I’m heading to work I see that same picture of homeless people, or those who are just volunteering, to help protest the 99% who are being taxed and becoming poor. Across from the protestors who are camping out in their tents are Officers guarding business buildings. Now that I think about it, Rivera’s drawing is similar to the Movement today and it makes me think of what people were going through, through the Great Depression. When I think about how today banks are trying to charge those who use their debit cards makes me refer back to how the picture at the bottom of the drawing how the people are trying to take all their money out their banks. My research about the Occupy Movement is connected back to the Great Depression and how a lot of people were going through tough times just like we are today. Rivera’s mural top drawing and the Occupy movement makes me think about what people who are working and have on their business attire, think about those who are becoming hopeless.

My Inspiration

What inspires me is music to be specific Afro Jack. This inspires me because recently I was in club waiting for my sister to sign up for the bad girls club show, and I was there to support her inside a club in San Francisco. As I was waiting for her they was playing music and it really inspired me, as I was sitting there. I was in the VIP area by myself and as the music was playing it made me forget about everything I was going through and somehow it was uplifting me to become a better person. As the music was getting louder my focus was looking into these blue lights and I was beginning to smile more and more as the music continued to play. I never felt so refreshed like this, by listening to music and I felt like if this kind of genre of music makes me feel this way I should listen to this all the time. My feelings and emotions were more into the sound and the lyrics of the song; the song was just sending a message to be higher in life. Feeling this way I was alone at the time, and I realized with me being by myself my focus was on my life and how I wanted to conquer the world and be successful. The first thing it reminded me of was Year Up, and I felt like I can achieve whatever and accomplish what ever goals that are set for me.  I think this inspiration would last for a long time with me, when I’m walking to school and from work. It changes my whole days forgetting about all the stressful things that are going on in my life. By listening to Afro Jack it inspires me to become a better person and be in my own little world, so I believe this inspiration would last years for me.

My Community

The community that I was involved in was BSU, which stand for black student union. This community was not exclusive just for African Americans. Most of the members who were involved were Asian, whites, Filipino and other different races. What we do as a community is we go out and do volunteer work for the homeless, feed them, and join them in church. We do all of our volunteer work in San Francisco. We also make sure that we celebrate black history month and all the African Americans who made history for this country. What I disliked about my community is that we never were organized, and when it was time to perform on the rallies we couldn't because most of our members didn't have good grades. It seems as if we didn't have a strong relationship within our community because everyone wanted to be the leader and talk all at once. So we lend roles to everyone and I was secretary of our club and we picked someone who we knew would be responsible for the club as president. When we did that, it made our club more organized and stronger, but we still had problems performing for people. I believe it was a hatred and racist thing at our school because the population was mainly whites. Overall we were a community and it made us who we are today.

Plus/Delta of Module 1

The things I learned from Module 1 about myself is being able to understanding the different utilities of a computer, I thought I was computer savvy before starting Year Up, but I learned a lot of things such as different operating systems and why is it so important. I was actually surprised at myself for participating in discussions I thought I would never be apart of, so with that said I was proud of myself, and also being able to communicate with others about my knowledge of computers and apply it to myself. A couple things I wasn't proud of was not being able to take time out and study for tech quizzes, or exams. I did well on all of my quizzes but I didn't understand the material that well, I just remembered from the book. I think if I was to at least take time to process the information a little more I would be on the same page as everyone else. Being here has really boosted up my professional, and listening skills, I've already knew how to code switch in a professional environment because I was raised to do so, so that is also one thing I am proud of.

The things I need to work on to grow as a professional is my writing skills, sometimes when writing I get stuck to where I lose track on what I am suppose to be writing and I lose focus on the subject. Also my grammar plays a role in my writing, I seem to not go over what I've written at times and when someone reads it, it makes no sense to me and I get so upset at myself because I didn't catch it. I've also been informed of a growth area to take more leadership in my community. It seems to be in me but I am afraid to take that spotlight and not doing things well for my community. Also my organization has gotten out of hand this module because of so much work, so I need to be more organized of my work and environment.

I am who I am despite the neighborhood I live in.

My neighborhood has been going through some dramatic changes throughout the years I have been living there. San Leandro was a nice place to live and a great place to have your children grow up in. It first started off as a medium class area back in the 90’s and early 200’s the building I lived in was pretty nice for affordable people and a lot of friendly neighbors causing no trouble.

As the years passed by managers and mechanics who worked in my apartment building began retiring. They never rebuild our apartments because they cared for the younger children more, having a lot of activities, such as train ride around the apartment building. We started getting African American manager workers which was pretty surprising to see once in a lifetime, and they started accepting anyone who was low income to live there not really checking their background history. It began with a lot of selling drugs in the neighborhood and people started calling our building the “purple vill” knows as people selling marijuana.

They made many changes in my neighborhood by rebuilding the buildings and painting them more nicely and approachable to outsiders. Unfortunately this didn’t change the view and the people that live inside my neighborhood. It seem as if the managers were accepting younger adults to live in the neighborhood apartments which grew to an unsafe environment for the people who were living there for years like me.

For the first time in my neighborhood there had been murder which really scared me and others for our safety. There’s so much trash, and needles that around when young children are playing. My neighborhood doesn’t make me who I am; I am who I am despite the neighborhood I live in. Someone who may live in a good neighborhood may experience that they are who they are because of the good surroundings they were surrounded by. It makes me a stronger person to know what neighborhood I grew up in and it makes me want to help build up my community and make it a better place to live.

The “Poverty Business"- dividing the opportunity divide!

Today in the “Poverty Business” world these companies who are exacerbating the opportunity divide with low-wage earners are those don’t really care about our community in helping it become better. The companies try and target the poor by offering those loans knowing that they can’t afford to pay them back. This is their profit to pull out extra money and tax those who already don’t have the funds in the first place. It’s very disappointing to see those companies get away with taxing the poor and leaving the wealthy alone separating the opportunity divide. “Good Cars for People Who Need Credit” I disagree with this because I feel that they should let people who can’t afford cars with good cars to start off their credit. This here is already dividing the opportunity divide with the poor and wealthy, making the wealthy feel as if they don’t have to worry about money and making the poor seem as if they need to grab all their finances and pay for a good car. Who is responsible for these alleviating issues is the individual themselves because we as individuals do not take the time to read the fine prints that we sign, because if there’s money involved we get to money hungry and don’t take the time to read what we are about to sign. Here is a quote I picked out the article, “she said BlueHipHop would debit the account for $124, and Humphries then would owe 17 payments of $71.98 every other week” (p6). Now notice that it says every other week, we don’t look at these important sentences, I feel like this is where the Poverty Business gets over.  Therefore those who are poor need to look for other resources to get money because those companies are out there to dig in our pockets and take everything we own, making us think they are there to help but really they are taxing us more than we ever borrowed. The government provides for a transiency of people, money for those in need we just don’t have the resources to use them or don’t know any resources out there that helps us.

My Journey, My Future, My Life, it's all about me!

I am a hard dedicated person who loves a challenge, that’s why I think I was vice president of DECA in high school. DECA is an association of marketing students who learn communication skills to compete in different marketing challenges around the world. I’ve always been the type of student who sits back and observe everything before I speak my own opinion. With that skill I realize that it puts me in a position where I can learn better and correct any mistakes, even though I make a lot of them.

My community also motivates me to push myself more, and better my education because I don’t want to be the person who sits back and settle for a job that I don’t enjoy, and the area that I live in is a bunch of negativity, drugs, and crimes. Not only does it make me want to be a stronger person but it also makes me want to help my community to be a better place for future kids who want to become something in life.

I am proud to say that I graduated from Dublin High School, and I went to Merritt College in Oakland as a full time student in 2010. I have no professional history, but it starts here and now at my new community, Year Up Bay Area. My passion to be in the medical field either doing dental hygienist, or medical billing, or also doing CNIT in whatever my skills take me. I believe anything is possible if you put your mind to it, it’s nothing to it, but to do it.

Troy Davis Execution Disaster

One article I found interesting on world news is an execution of Troy Davis an African American, who went onto execution September 2011 in Atlanta Georgia. It all started in 1989 when Mark MacPhail, a Caucasian private security guard officer in Savannah, was trying to help a homeless man who was brutally beaten by an unknown man. Out of nowhere the officer was shot twice and immediately died by the unknown attacker of the homeless man. There had been witnesses after witnesses claiming that they had seen Troy Davis kill the officer right in front of them. August 23, 1989 Troy Davis was charged with the murder and sentenced to the death penalty, there had not been any evidence that Troy Davis committed this crime, nor was there any murder weapon found in this case. There had also been a rumor that another person was the one that shot MacPhail, Sylvester ‘Redd Coles’ but there were about nine witnesses saying that they saw Troy Davis and when they appeared in court they continually changed their story. So with that said Troy Davis was on his fourth execution date, still no evidence that he killed MacPhail was sentenced to death on September 21, 2011. With all of his supporters, family, and friends behind him it was a disturbing night at 11:08pm when Troy Davis was pronounced dead.

How I feel about this story is it’s so frustrating, and sad to see someone who is African American put on death row, with it being Troy Davis, an innocent man, US Supreme court finds no evidence or connection tied to Troy Davis being the killer of officer MacPhail. This makes the system look so racist, and lazy to even hear Troy Davis case out, and my question to the US Supreme court is, why kill someone and have others watch? This is not human like.

My Sources:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/19/troy-davis-georgia-execution

www.InsideBayArea.com