Sabrina Zuniga

English 1A
Professor Hanvey
2/24/16
Learning From Reality
Many people dont know what the word discourse community means. What do you
think about when you hear the word discourse community ? Well when I first heard this
word, I thought of it as some sort of neighborhood that shares ideas with each other. A
discourse community is actually a group of people who get involved together to talk
about and to communicate about a particular topic. A reading called The Concept of
Discourse Community by a researcher named John Swales, a discourse community is
characterized into 6 categories: one being the common public goals that a community
has, the second category being the type of communication the people use to understand
each other, third one being the information and feedback they give out so they can all be
on the same page and know what is going on every time, fourth being the methods of
communication, its similar to communication but the only difference is that this type of
communication has genres, fifth being the language they use whether its Spanish,
English, through the computer, meetings, etc, and lastly the sixth would be how many
members are in the community which is also known as the threshold. John Swales split
these into 6 categories because he feels that this is the type of characteristics each
professional communities should have.
The major I am currently enrolled in is criminal justice. When I was still in high
school I wasnt really thinking about what major I was going to choose, I was really just

thinking about going to college and taking any classes, literally. So, as I enrolled at PCC
and I noticed criminal justice was there so I read about it and thought I should give it a
try. The reason I chose this major was because its about law enforcement and it would be
pretty cool to learn about what happens when a crime occurs, and how people are
punished by the states or countries. As I started taking the classes for my major, my
professor talked about an FBI agent I suddenly got interested in this career. My criminal
justice class had a pretty good feeling as soon as I walked in there. My professor looked
kind of mean at first but as time went by he was actually turned out to be a great teacher.
He is one of the reasons why I was inspired on learning more about the law because he
was a police officer himself and also a lawyer. It seemed fun, when he would talk to us
about all the types of cases he would have to investigate because some of them would be
so scary and so mysterious. Being an FBI agent is my goal right now, so I researched a
little more about this career and realized that it has all of john swales six categories. An
FBIs common goal is to protect the united states from terrorism, combat major white
collar crimes, protect the united states against cyber based attacks, high-technology
crimes, etc. They basically Take care of the major problems that the united states have.
The FBI divides its investigations into different number of programs, so the way an FBI
agent communicates is by the group they are in, they use radio communication by
federal investigative agencies that involve fewer code references and greater reliance on
clearly wooded communication. states Dan Robb, a special agent DHS retired. The FBI
also always shares information and feedback with each other, they do this because they
have to know what everybody thinks about a certain case they are dealing with and have
to give each other feedback whether they should do a better job or if they are doing a

good job so far. The methods of genre in communication vary, because like I said before
the investigations are split into programs so they all have different genres depending on
what each program is researching. The technical language the FBI agents use is mostly
paperwork, and as group mettings, they also use at least 9 languages which are Arabic,
Chinese, Farsi, Korean, Punjabi, Spanish, Urdu, and lastly, Vietnamese. This is a great
artifact of the FBI language because with this being said the FBI have translated milliona
of language and it has been over 22,000 hours of interpretation, also there are many
linguistics that are located overseas and domestically. Lastly, the number of members the
FBI hold is at least 35,000 people all over the world and every single one of them are
either special agents, scientists, information technology specialists. This is one of the law
enforcement career that is extremely populated and they all work great together to get
things done faster.
With all this being said, I will be telling you a story about how I came to choose to
become an FBI agent. I dont really much of what kind of things were happening around
my community. My family would usually tell me about all the crimes that would happen
till this day because I wasnt going to be able to understand when I was younger. I began
to see the worse things happen with my own eyes. My family lived in a neighborhood
where there was always gang activity happening every day. Out of all the events my
family told me about , I could only remember one of them. It started when one night it
was around 12:00 in the night, we were coming back from my aunts house I believe. At
that time my mom, my sister, my brother and I were living at my grandmas apartment
because we werent financially stable. I remember asking my mother for 1$ to go buy
something at the store because you know how kids are. My mom said no to me and I

started crying, my grandma offered to walk me to the store, my grandma didnt mind
because her apartment complex was on top of the liquor store so she took me. When I
walked in, I see this guy, I smiled and waved at him. Im walking with my grandma by all
the candy and suddenly I heard shots being fired they were landing inside the store. My
grandma grabbed me hard and threw me behind the cash register, I got really scared and
began to cry. Later on, the cops came and asked everybody who was in the store to
evacuate immediately. As we were walking outside, I saw the worst thing a child could
see, I saw the same guy I waved at earlier that night on the fllor covered in blood and
there was a hug puddle of blood every where around him it seemed as if he was shot in
his head, his friend was also dead but he was under a lays delivery truck with also a big
puddle of blood. I was just blinded from what I have seen, and even till this day I imagine
this event that happened to me because my grandma still continues living in the same
place, its been 40 years now. I never knew what I wanted to do right after I graduated
high school, but because of this experience that I had, I really wanted to to know what it
was like to be a person who investigates everything that happens when there are crimes
like the one I went through.
This event changed my life a lot and it had a very big impact on me. I dont know
who those men were but I really would like to know because I feel sorry for what
happened to them and I feel sorry for their family. This event lead me to believe that
everybody goes through these kind of bad things a lot and sometimes even worse. This is
why I decided to pursue my career in FBI agent because I want to be able to tell my story
to people who are interested in it because I really like saying how everything happened
and how I feel about it. I also want to be able to help people who deal with all these

crimes around their community. On the other hand, I want to also come back to the
community I grew up in so I can be somebody that kids or that my friends look up to for
what I have accomplished.
The federal bureau of investigation is an organization that has locations everywhere.
The FBI was founded in the year of 1908 by Charles Bonaparte, Theodore Roosevelt, and
J.Edgar Hoover. Their parent organization is the united states department of justice. They
work all over the world, the FBI headquarters is in Washington, DC and the organization
has 56 field offices that are located throughout the united states its incredible how they all
communicate from one state to the other. Most of the days work time starts at 7 am in the
morning. It seems like a very tiring day for many FBI agents because some of these
agents work 24/7. Although there are many different departments and programs in the
federal bureau of investigation, the lower people in lower programs of the FBI can work
their way up to become either a higher representative of the FBI to have more
involvement with some particular cases. Also, the FBI had an annual budget of 8.3 billion
in the year of 2014, today their annual budget might be a little more due to the increase of
crimes happening all over the united states. I was not able to do a one on one interview
with an FBI agent because they are very busy people, but I was able to find an interview
of an agent online and I thought it was very interesting. A veteran named Loren C. Was
being interviewed and she was able to tell us the ins and outs of the special agent job.
Some facts I learned from her interview were that long hours of work are expected even
when your not supposed to be working that day they might be able to still call you in. She
became a police officer at first for 9 years, she later met some FBI agents and noticed
they were very ,motivated people and very committed to their job so she gave it a try.

Loren was then asked what education path she took to become a cop, and she said she
majored in criminal justice and went through the state police academy to enter the police
department. She also mentions that the FBI organization hires people from many races,
and she just gave some advice to people to get an education that interest you so you could
enjoy your career. On the other hand she mentioned that over 500-700 candidates get
hired every year and get at least 10,000 applicants, that is a very large amount, and the
candidates they hired must be personally and professionally. Last but not least, the last
thing she mentioned was the hardest part of being an FBI special agent. The hardest part
would be thinking about how the investigation is going to be done. She said it takes up a
lot of thinking. In my opinion I think being an FBI agent is a lot of hard work because
people have to put in a lot of hours at work when ever theres big cases to solve. A lot of
people spend a lot of years with the FBI because they are very committed to it and really
get things done when it comes to investigating.
The FBI uses many types of forms for their job. . I brought a background check form
online from the FBI. The FBI background is the most important part of the process of
hiring.It is also used for making sure that certain individuals would be qualified to enter
the professions that are sensitive. Most of the background checks include fingerprints
because Many people can use somebody else name or social security and that is
considered illegal. It also shows all the arrest of the person whether it has been in the past
or a long time ago. Thats why this form is very important when it comes to checking
people who are getting hired. Another form is called a personal identification card. This
card is used for a person to ink all 10 of their fingerprints and put all of them in a
form,this form comes in handy whenever fingerprints are found a crime scene and they

suspect that somebody is the murderer they can look at the files and match the
fingerprints with the person.Related to this kind of information, the FBI organization
stores about 50,000 hair samples from people for the same reason.All these artifacts are a
great help to the organization because it makes it easier for agents or any other law
enforcement agency to solve a crime faster.
In order for me to get into the FBI academy there are many steps I would have to
take. But first, any candidate that applies for the position of an FBI agent would have to
be at least 23 years old but have to be younger than 37 years old, but on the other hand if
there are veterans who would like to come back they would end up getting an age waiver
to be able to join again. Also, another requirement is that the person applying must be a
U.S citizen. Third, is the one that I think is the most important which would be having a 4
year college degree from a college or university. And lastly, the person must have worked
professionally for at least 3 years to gain more experience. There is still more
requirements needed which are that FBI agents must qualify for at least 1 of the 5 FBI
special agent programs which are: Language, Law, Accounting, Computer Science,
Diversified. There is also 2 tests that are needed to take in order to get hired. There are
two online application testing. Phase one is taken in the FBI facility and it contains of
written tests. Phase 2, this test includes a writing test and a in-person interview which is
conducted by other FBI agents. There are different types of FBI jobs including, Snipers,
Behavioral Analysts, SWAT, Intelligence Analyst,and Linguistics. And each of these jobs
have their own different requirements that a person must meet. Right now, I am currently
taking the beginning classes for the criminal justice major. Im on the right path right
now, because when Im done with my general education classes and my major classes I

will transfer to either Cal State LA or Humboldt State University to get my masters
degree I criminal justice to pursue my dreams. What I really need to start doing right
now is trying to find a way on how I would be able to get any type of internships soon so
I can get a better chance of getting into it and so I wouldnt do my things last minute
either. There are three types of internships I can take one is called the FBI Honors
Program, this internship is a paid summer program and it is designed for students who are
undergraduate and graduate students. And another internship program is called the FBI
Volunteer program.This program is unpaid for and it is for undergraduates in their senior
year or junior year. It allows the students to know the FBI operations and know about the
available careers and also get to know how special agents work. I think I will need to get
more in shape if I want to become an FBI agent, because like I mentioned earlier the
academy is really challenging and it takes a lot of running and training. But I think I
would want to become a police officer or a CHP officer first to gain my 3 years of
experience at least to work my way up to the FBI organization. And I would also want to
of course get my masters degree in criminal justice as soon as I can. What I hope to
contribute to my family and my community is to give them a good example that not
everything is impossible, because you can do everything you want if you really want it.
And also I want to be able to tell students who are going to be in the same shoes as I am
that they have to go get an education no matter what the situation is so they can have a
good future for themselves. I also want to know what it feels like to investigate a certain
crime that has occured, thats my main goal after I get my 4 year degree from a university.
I want to be able to make my family proud and I want to learn a lot of new things that
have to do with crimes.

Works Cited
1) Gulotta, Margaret. All About FBI Linguistics. FBI. FBI, 29 July 2008.Web 27
Feb.2016
2) Swales, John. The Concept of Discourse Community. Genre Analysis English in
academic and research settings . Boston. Cambridge. UP, 1990. 21-32. Print.
3) Read an Interview with an FBI Agent. All Criminal Justice Schools. N.P ., n.d
Web 27 Feb. 2016.
4) FBI. FBI, 16 Oct. 2012. Web. 27 Feb.2016