Senior Experience Research Paper

Senior Experience Reflection
The Senior Experience was an excellent project to prepare me for the challenges common in college and the real world. One obstacle I faced was creating an appointment with the Lexington County Sheriffs Department. It was difficult waiting on the police department to contact me back, while deadlines for when I needed job shadowing forums steadily approached. Along with that, I had difficulties managing my time, because as a Student Athletic Training Aid I had to stay late after school everyday. I overcame this by finding work I could do in the baseball dugout and working over the weekend. On the other hand, Ms. Capers and I worked well together. We had the same ILT and could meet whenever needed. The only problem was that I chose a teacher that had not been an advisor before, luckily I was able to explain what her role was well enough.

While choosing a topic for my research paper I had no idea what to do.

My solution was to go onto Discus and go to opposing view point and find the first subject I wanted to know more about. I settled on the legalization of marijuana because it is controversial and timely. On Discus, there was a wealth of information for and against my argument. I found every resource I needed on discus and then I looked into the background of the authors of these articles to determine weather or not it could be trusted. With the help of Ms. Florence, and my annotated bibliography, I was able to create a catalog of the articles I read, wether or not they could be trusted, and the main ideas of the articles. With all of these resources my research paper was easily put

together.
For my job shadowing I went to the Lexington County Sheriffs Department and shadowed Detective Burrell. I dressed appropriately and followed every rule they set for me. I was able to ask the Detective and his coworkers questions respectfully about my topic. I asked many important questions and learned the viewpoints of our county police on marijuana and other drugs. I also learned the basic responsibilities of a detective.
As my 10 hours of community service I was a Student Athletic Training Aid for the Lexington High School football team. During my 10 hours I work one Friday night football game. I was assigned bottles on this night and was in charge of timeout water. While working I maintained a professional attitude and stayed on top of timeouts.
As for my exhibition, I spent a great amount of time preparing. I was able to find photo that connected to the topic of each slide and made my presentation pleasing to the viewer. I was able to practice my presentation with my family and had one meeting with my advisor where I presented and we went through how each slide could be better. My advisor told me I was knowledgeable about my topic, spoke clearly, and made good eye contact. One thing I could have done better on was controlling my time. While practicing I was close to a two minutes short of the desired time, luckily durning my presentation I took longer than expected on questions after and was able to achieve the right time. In all I felt extremely confident going into the exhibition and when I left I knew I had done the best I could.