Academics

Hello everyone, 

To start off my first blog, I want to share what I did over the summer! My summer was filled with trips to Utah, Arizona, Japan, and Florida! I traveled and went to so many places that I’d never been to before. I loved experiencing a completely new culture in Japan and learning about the different customs of that country. I also enjoyed going to Disney World with my family and my grandmother, whom I hadn't seen in a while!

This first month of school has been a little hectic. I feel like the seniors and juniors, as well as Ms. Jaramillo, are getting settled into our new shared environment in our combined Odyssey class. I’m getting used to sharing the Odyssey space when the juniors and seniors are both at different stages in our projects. We’ve all been getting to know each other, and getting to know each other’s projects. There have been little assignments throughout the month: vision boards, each sharing a piece of research we found, an elevator pitch for the junior Odyssey Scholars’ speeches coming up, and now this blog!

I’m starting off the month super excited for what’s to come in my project and the new developments it’ll have. I plan to start off the year by doing a lot of interviews in order to get new perspectives from people in my field of study, as well as getting in contact with local, and non-local, organizations that focus on crime reduction to incorporate some of their ideas into my own!

Thank you for reading my first blog of my senior year. Bye!

Welcome back to my blog, everyone! 

The month of September, for me, has looked mostly research-based! Sometimes, it can be a bit tedious constantly doing research, but when you’re invested in the topic, it’s actually quite fun. My main focus of research for this month has been researching the effects of childhood abuse (in any form) on potential future criminal activity for children. It’s found that about 97% of people in prison have a past involving childhood trauma, compared to 61% of the general population. The start of my research on that topic came from my first interview with former deputy sheriff, police officer, and school resource officer, Robin Hopkins. Hopkins explained to me that “in a nutshell, crime starts young,” and you have to start deterring children from going down the wrong path early on before it evolves into things much worse.

As well as research, I’ve also started to think about ideas for a middle school workshop activity related to my Odyssey project. And although I can’t reveal that information yet, I have a lot of ideas in mind that I think would work great! I’m super excited to see where those ideas take me, because they’re not all sorted out yet. On the topic of new ideas, I’ve been looking into Albuquerque’s neighborhood watch programs, with future plans to get involved with the people and communities associated with them. I think not only looking at the police’s and government’s side of criminal deterrence but also the general public’s help with criminal deterrence, will be a new perspective to forming my project’s end goal.

I have multiple plans for the month of October that I’m super excited to get started on, so I can’t wait to tell you all about that next month! 

Thank you for reading! See you next month!

Welcome back, everyone! To be honest, the month of October has felt the least productive for me. I’ve been super busy with college applications, which has pushed a lot of other work aside. Although I had many plans for this month, it didn't turn out exactly how I had planned it to be! But that’s alright because now I can aim to have those goals done by next month! In the middle of all the businesses in October, I was able to brainstorm an idea for my community involvement aspect of my project. I’ve decided to join Neighborhood Crime Watch program meetings, in order to see what different communities do to inform their members about the crime and safety in their area. I’ve also started on my annotated bibliography, which I aim to have done by the end of this year! It’ll be filled with sources that gave me helpful insight into my project and current research. It will also go towards my project's final goal, my policy document.

In terms of the Odyssey group, we have begun planning out our volunteer work with Cuidando Los Niños. Last year, during my junior Odyssey year, we volunteered by helping take care of the students they have at their school for the day! We then bought Christmas presents in the month of December for a family who had sent us their Christmas list. I’m super excited to be able to get to do that again, because it was super rewarding last year.

For the month of November, my main goal is to work on setting interview dates with the couple of people I have planned to contact. I also would like to start putting in research towards my project's goal. In order to create a policy document, I need to first understand exactly what it is, what work I need to have to do, and what information I want to make sure goes into my policy.

That’s the recap for the month of October! I hope to come back at the end of next month with more completed goals. 

Thank you for reading this month's blog!

Welcome back to my senior Odyssey blog, everyone! I’m super excited to start off this month's blog by saying that I have felt as though November has been my most productive with furthering my project, and getting research done! I know I’ve struggled in the previous month or so to be as productive as I wanted to be, so I’m happy I got to change that cycle in these past few weeks.

At the beginning of my senior year one of my main Odyssey goals was to execute many interviews. At first, I struggled with this. But over the past two weeks, I have gotten in contact with two amazing people! A little over a week ago, I reached out to one of Albuquerque’s ACS workers, Alex Kent. And today, November 30th, we were able to meet up and go over some of the questions I had planned out to ask him. ACS, Albuquerque Community Safety, is one of Albuquerque’s newer developed public safety response teams that has been in effect since September of 2021. Their role in the city is to respond to calls made in regards to mental health, substance use, and homelessness. And from there, they go out into the community and help solve these situations individually. The interview gave me insight into alternative forms of community safety, and crime prevention that don’t directly involve the police. My other future interviewee is someone I met last week while I was in Dallas for thanksgiving break. While meeting up with some of my mom’s life long friends, I met a guy named Todd who is a pathologist, former medical examiner and forensic pathologist, with an MD and PHD in pharmacology, as well as a bachelor’s and master’s in chemistry. I will be reaching out to him tomorrow to set up an interview with him. I am super excited to get a perspective like his that is more on the science side of my project.

As far as what lies ahead, next week the Odyssey Scholars along with Ms. Jaramillo will be bringing in gifts for a family we are working with at Cuidando Los Niños. We also have a lot of work to bring to a close over these next couple weeks before winter break begins. As excited as I am to be heavily Odyssey project focused for the next while, it is also coming with a lot of stress! It has to be done, so we will get there when we get there!

Thank you for taking the time to read my November blog! I’ll see you all at the same time next month!

Welcome back to my final blog of my senior Odyssey year 2023 everyone! My work this year has honestly been some of the most rewarding work I’ve ever done. I’ve spent the past few months diving deeper into my project than I ever have before. There were times, especially in December, when I was super stressed and scrambled to finish things up! But I am here now and excited for what’s to come in the second semester, the final semester.

This blog is going to start off by summarizing some of the accomplishments I’ve made with my project this semester. In August I started out my year mainly by getting used to the new environment with Ms. Jaramillo and the Junior Odyssey Scholars. I interviewed one of my close family friends, Robin Hopkins, former deputy schedule and military. Hopkins gave me insight into the minds of criminals and how their childhood affected their future choices. She started by giving me the example of the man who shot her. Hopkins also gave me ideas for middle school workshop ideas that will happen in my second semester in the spring. There was also a lot of planning happening in August in an attempt to plan out some of my goals going forward. 

September started with further research into the statistics of prisoners and child abuse. This also led me into my next research that had to deal with early childhood deterrence from crime, for example the D.A.R.E. Program, a failed program aimed to do early deterrence in children for drugs, alcohol, and gangs. In September I met up with my dad to go over some crime maps. We also made future plans to get in contact with UNM’s mapping team.

October, as I’ve said, was my least productive month. I was busy with college applications and came to a point where I had so much information, but wasn’t exactly sure what to do with it. I decided to then use my time researching policy documents, which is what I planned my project's end goal of my senior year to be. I followed that work by starting research on community, and individual deterrence. Before then, I had just been researching law enforcement deterrence.  

November was my favorite month of Odyssey! I found two amazing interview sources. Alex Kent, and Tood Glauser. Alex Kent is an ACS worker. I learned from him that ACS (Albuquerque Community Safety), answers calls and goes out in the field to work directly with the homeless, people with mental health issues, and people with drug problems who need help. Todd Glauser is a pathologist and former forensic pathologist who I will interview in the future with his science perspective of my project.

My month of December was mostly just wrapping up work with my literature review, annotated bibliography, this blog, and putting together my portfolio completed with all the work I’ve done this year! 

Thank you all so much for reading my last blog of this year! I can’t wait to talk to you all next semester in January!

For the month of January I’ve (hopefully) solidified my end project! As many times as I’ve said and thought that- I only hope that this time it’s really true. I’ve decided that I am going to go through the Albuquerque Police Department's website and take note of what can be improved, what they’re doing well, and compare their information to other police department websites. In doing this, I hope to suggest changes that can be made, as well as help improve the information that is being released to the public through their site. My objective is to improve Albuqueruqe’s safety as well as the community's feeling of safety, as much as a person in my position can do.

I’ve been working really eagerly towards my end presentation because the date to present is sneaking up on us! It seems like a while but the time will go by so fast! I’ve been hard at work searching through APD!'s websites and links attached to their information they provide to the public. I also solidified a date I will be interviewing Todd Glauber, former forensic pathologist and current pathologist. I can not wait to get his perspective on the more discovery side of crimes.

Although this month's blog was short, my progress was quite the opposite. It has been a significantly important time for my project to be able to come to a wrap up.

Thank you for reading my January blog, and I can’t wait for next month's blog to be full of new progress!

Welcome to my February blog everyone!

This month's work hasn't felt the most exciting in terms of my project, there's been difficulty with interviews as well as finding certain information I feel I need to complete my project. As we get closer and closer to the end, I feel very stressed out because this is a crucial time we have to get things together, but I also feel mixed with emotions. Although our projects are coming close to their conclusions, and that's amazing to look back on to see all of our hard work we've done, it's also a sad moment of realization that something we have had so much passion for has to be over. But that just gives me all the more motivation to work towards my best work yet! 

Last week on Thursday February 22nd, a few junior and senior Odyssey Scholars took a trip to UNM’s Zimmerman library to find potential resources that we could use that we wouldn't otherwise have found! I found a couple books done on how adverse childhood experiences can affect future criminal activity, as well as a book on victimization and what the justice system has done to help victims of crimes recover from the trauma they endure from what happened. Although I was not able to check out the books, I got to scan a couple chapters from them. Later on, I will be reading and taking notes on those pages.

Next month is the seniors last full month of our high school career. As scary as that is, I’m just hoping the future has much to offer. In April I’ll be finalizing my presentation to prepare for the big day of senior Odyssey Scholar presentations!

I’ll see you all next month! Thank you!

Hello, everyone!

Over the past few weeks the junior Odyssey Scholars have been writing, and preparing, a two-minute speech about what our project is, what we’ve done so far, and what we are looking to do in the future.

When Ms. Goessl first introduced the idea of presenting a speech in front of family and friends, I was honestly pretty excited! I have done a few big presentations in front of a number of people, ranging from about 50 people to even 150 people, so with my previous experience in public speaking I wasn’t too nervous about it. But as we got closer to the date of the speech, I started to get more and more nervous about presenting. What calmed my nerves was editing my speech with Ms. Goessl, and getting to practice presenting in front of my Odyssey peers over the span of a few class periods. After I had practice, I felt like I pretty solidly had my speech down and was ready to present.

When it came to the date of the speech, October 19, I had a lot of nerves as I was waiting for my turn to go up, but after a few seconds of speaking, my nerves pretty much went away. Overall, I feel like not only my speech, but everyone's speeches as well as the whole reception, went as great as it possibly could have gone, especially for the first time.

I am honestly looking forward to having more presentations/speeches with the Odyssey group. With my next presentation, I am hoping to have furthered my topic and feel confident in the information I am presenting.

Thank you for reading my first blog!

Hello again, everyone!

Between November and early December, the junior Odyssey Scholars have not done any kind of presentation like the one we did in October. Ms. Goessl has mentioned a presentation that each Odyssey Scholar, juniors and seniors, will do after winter break. The presentation will be in front of several teachers, who will provide outside perspectives and feedback on each of our topics, as well as on our work progress. The teachers will come in during our Odyssey class period(s), and observe a short presentation from each Scholar. Personally, I am really looking forward to it. Public speaking has been growing on me this past year, and I think that’s because it gives me a feeling of accomplishment.

As far as my research goes, I’ve been looking into violent crime in Las Vegas, Nev., which ranks close to Albuquerque in its above-average violent crime rates. Furthermore, I have been working on finding experts in my field of study. I’ve contacted Dr. DelCampo, Executive Director of UNM’s Innovation Academy, in hopes of getting contact information of potential interview sources. When he came to talk with the junior Odyssey Scholars back in October, he mentioned giving me contact information for a professor at UNM, as well as for people who work in the Albuquerque Police Department’s Gun Crime Intelligence Analysis Unit. Interviewing workers in gun crime statistics would greatly impact my Odyssey project goal.

That’s it for now. Thank you for reading!

Hello, everyone, 

The month of January honestly felt a bit slow. On top of coming back from winter break at the beginning of the month, I missed the first week back and had to catch up on work afterward. It has made my weeks feel slow and a bit less productive. 

Independent productivity is one of the biggest characteristics to either have or learn how to have as an Odyssey Scholar. That has definitely been a struggle of mine. 

As for the positives, I have moved on to working on getting my research organized for the cities of Albuquerque and Las Vegas so that I can actually start a comparison of the information. 

In the last week of January, the idea of a topic chance was brought up. Because my project is pretty broad--studying five different cities and all violent crimes in each of those cities, then comparing the information and coming up with solutions to lower crime--it can turn into a mess in terms of organization. Narrowing my topic could be beneficial both for my organization and my productivity.

The first idea involved completely switching my topic from violent crime in the five cities to studying hate crime in the United States. I ultimately decided against that. Currently, I am thinking about narrowing my topic to either studying all violent crimes in Albuquerque or one specific violent crime in the cities I’m studying. I definitely have some choices to make.

Thank you for reading!

Hello, everyone.

The month of February has honestly seemed like my most productive month thus far. I’ve been thinking about how the Odyssey Scholars don’t have much time left before our end of the year presentation, even though it’s only February, and I think that’s pushed me to work harder. Time has gone by so quickly this year and it can feel stressful, but I have to remind myself to continue on and go with the flow. 

Since you all have last heard from me, I was thinking about a topic change. The switch has officially happened and my topic has been narrowed down to researching crime specifically in Albuquerque, based on this question: “When looking at Albuquerque’s crime rate, why is it high and what can be done to lower criminal activity?”

In a way I feel like I am starting from the beginning, all over again, but the switch has also helped me to feel like I have more of a sense of where to go now. I interviewed Leonard Garcia, Sandia Prep’s head of security and former APD investigator, and I have set up an interview with Robin Hopkins, a retired sheriff's deputy, former detective, school resource officer, DARE instructor, and emergency response team member. I will ask her similar questions that I asked of Mr. Garcia in order to get different perspectives on Albuquerque's crime. 

Thank you for the continual support of reading my blogs!

Welcome to my last 2023 Odyssey blog of the year. Time went by so quickly from when I first started my project to now. But at the same time I honestly can't even remember what I wrote about last because so much has happened since.

This morning as I was leaving home I was thinking that I have done so much research related to so many different aspects of my project this year, and it’s going to be a crazy process to fuse them all together, to get my end result. Although I still have a year left of my project, time this year went by so fast that I can’t imagine how fast it will go by next year. So much to do in so little time. But that thought got me thinking of how I could start to piece together my project's goal, to find ways of crime deterrence. To find ways to make Albuquerque safer, to make Albuquerque's citizens feel safer, and steps the state and city could take to keep us from having the highest crime rate in the nation.

Since my February blog, I’ve done a lot of research on drugs, including the laws on drugs, why drugs lead to crime, and why people start doing drugs in the first place. I wanted to get to the base of the issue, because drugs are one of the main causes of crimes in Albuquerque. I interviewed a former Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputy, Robin Hopkins, and she gave me many reasons why drugs lead to crime. 

I feel like this is the most progress I've seen in terms of connecting my research to my goal of finding ways to deterrence. It’s only making me more excited to continue my research and work toward my project's goal. I can't wait to see where I go from here.