Administration of Justice 10:45 am Monday through Thursday Summer Session 2009 Mary

Eng 6-16-09 Birthplace: Portland Oregon 31 years Born July 25 When I was young I
wanted to be a news broadcaster because I loved international news and politics.
Other things I wanted to be included nurse, lawyer, writer, singer, politician,
journalist. Currently I am very excited about my studies. I would like to obtain an
AA in paralegal studies and work as a paralegal as I continue my education in
completion of a bachelor’s and then on to law school. I attended high school at St.
Cecilia Academy in Nashville TN where my family moved when I was young. I graduated
in 1995 and have studied at four different upper level schools. My educational
goals are to use the paralegal program to build a firm working vocabulary of legal
issues for more advanced legal studies. I am also very interested in related
subjects of business and governmental administration I am also very interested in
social justice issues and can imagine working pro bono for a variety of causes
which inspire me or in the legal department of a non-profit. My career goals at the
moment are to continue my part time work for marketing agencies and for a retail
store specializing in vitamins and supplements, where I work retail as well as
manage twitter marketing. In the long term, I would like to find challenging
internships in the legal field, and be able to work as a paralegal or legal
assistant to gain real-world experience in the law. Due to my previous college
credits I will be very quickly able to also complete a bachelors and go on to a law
program. The fields that particularly interest me are intellectual property law,
environmental law, immigration law, international law, and the study of the
legislative process as it seeks to defend persons against domestic violence, hate
crimes, hate speech, police brutality, privacy invasion, and cruel and degrading
treatment prohibited by the Hague Convention. As a youth, my teachers were very
supportive of volunteer work and I have worked for numerous groups for a variety of
causes. I have volunteered with Refugee Resettlement, a homeless drop in shelter in
San Diego, the oncology unit of Parthenon Pavilion hospital, Food Not Bombs
homeless meals program, legal department of The Gay and Lesbian Center, Animal
Rescue and Protection League, In Defense of Animals. I have written for art project
wikipedias dealing with the open information movement, as well as writing about
animals and the environment for an educational nonprofit. I have also written
articles for the Indy Media network, an information hub for activists and political
networking. I also interned with an environmental magazine called Natural Living
and mainly dealt with marketing, events, and promotions. A project I started this
year involves interviewing homeless people about their life circumstances for two
blogs about poverty in homelessness in Los Angeles called Profiles in Poverty and
Packaged People. I also maintain the twitter account “homelessla” and “sudanlove”
about the ongoing war in the Darfur Region of Sudan in Africa. I have participated
in numerous peace marches and educational demonstrations against animal torture. In
terms of my educational goals I have completed 15 hours of paralegal studies and am
enrolled for 15 hours next term. I will be taking torts, family law, bankruptcy
law, business law II, and intro to paralegal II. Previous classes included criminal
law, constitutional law, communications law, business
law and intro to paralegal field. My prior college courses covered a broad array of
humanities and science studies including philosophy, art history, world
literatures, calculus, chemistry, anatomy, public speaking, sociology, psychology.
I have now approximately 90 credit hours and hope to easily attain a bachelor’s
degree and prepare for law school admission. My high school had an excellent arts
program with a focus on visual arts, dance, public speaking, theater, and music. My
career history has spanned many fields. I worked as a caregiver for a paraplegic,
an assistant to a criminal lawyer. I have managed a coffee shop. I have managed
guerilla marketing campaigns for movie and music advertising through numerous
marketing agencies. The utilization of computer skills, photography, document
preparation, report writing, and demographic analysis, as well as direct
communications skills are very essential to successful event execution and
marketing campaigns. I have also worked in retail environments and am familiar with
cash handling and am very comfortable dealing with the public in a retail or
service environment. I worked in telephone fundraising for a company that
contracted work with ACLU, Amnesty International, Environmental Defense Fund, Earth
Justice environmental lawyers group, Human Rights Campaign, International Committee
for the Red Cross, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and
political action groups. This was an excellent opportunity to develop
communications skills contingent on continuous research of relevant current issues
pertaining to the non-profits. My learning style could be summed up as passionate,
or fast and furious. When I am focussed, I can learn a lot in a short amount of
time. I love reading and read very quickly and have always read a great deal,
whether from newspapers, books, magazines, textbooks, or now especially the web.
When my mind tires of reading, I learn well by audio formats. My favorite web
resources for learning are Itunes University which distributes free audio and video
lectures from universities around the world. I love a legal podcast called This
Week in Law. I love the web resource Justia.com for highly functional webbased
legal study. I love http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/written by the
preeminent counsel for defendants in peer to peer file sharing cases. It is very
helpful for me to print e-books, websites, wikipedia articles, and PDF files from
court cases to allow myself a chance to get away from the computer screen. When I
study printed material, highlighting and note taking help me a lot. I also love
documentaries and foreign films as educational resources. I love to learn languages
and have applied myself to the study of many languages and use online web-stream
radio and now even video to learn languages or watch online classes. When I read a
textbook I am a firm believer in active reading. I highlight, underline, notate in
the margins, or take notes in a notebook. The act of writing or highlighting helps
me to remember things. Paying attention in lecture also helps a lot. By the time
I'm taking a test, it’s as though I can replay the professor’s voice, and remember
the subjects discussed in class. I like hands on learning, but prefer class time to
be very focussed. Classes that weave into too much extraneous discussion are not
very interesting. I love power point presentation as a way of learning visually as
the teacher instructs. I used to love watching CSPAN’s governmental proceedings and
love listening to the BBC as well as the recent U.S. Copyright Office hearings or
the oral arguments from the Supreme Court or the lower courts as they are now
easily playable on the web. The internships and volunteer work I will seek in the
future will give me hands on experience in different aspects of the legal field so
I can hone down my interests and customize my studies according to my most
predominant interests. I would like to work in a multi-lingual immigration law
clinic and learn in that atmosphere. I would also like to learn more about
environmental and animal rights legislation. There is a very good program at Lewis
and Clark law school with those specialties. I have written an Intellectual
Property firm here in Los Angeles that deals with entertainment law regarding the
possibility of an internship. Many friends I have are musicians, sound engineers,
programmers, music managers, or promoters and I find that they provide me
invaluable information about the music industry which relates well to my interest
in intellectual property and media law. Another friend I have
is a software programmer who teaches me a lot about breaking trends in the
technology world. Learning from people is very important and that is why skills of
diplomacy and tact and social graces are especially helpful in obtaining useful
hints and information for ongoing studies. In my experience writing for an
entertainment website called alisterz.com, I learned a lot about human relations,
the interview process, web publishing, as well as the musical and arts subjects I
covered. It was then in January of 2009 that I realized the power of blogging to
affect your community, inspire the arts world, speak out about political subjects,
and gain a certain level of notoriety and public respect. Since then I am
increasingly interested in web video casting and have found twitvid.eo and
http://bambuser.com/ to be completely easy to use functional video casting
technologies. My experience with the website led directly to an increased interest
in photography and web journalism and the development of my youtube channel with
footage of the local music scene and interviews pertaining to law and social
justice and poverty. Another twitter account I started called “lawpub” follows
major headlines from law blogs, law firms, law schools, and human rights advocacy
groups. I find this kind of twitter use to be extremely helpful for learning
rapidly and linking to a variety of interesting websites, news stories, and cases
which will help my understanding of law in its modern application. Another twitter
account I have focuses on the issues surrounding law very specific to peer-to-peer
file sharing, torrents, and international legislation and litigation pertinent to
issues of copyright, patent, and changing notions of property. In high school I
performed in numerous theater productions including musicals and Shakespeare. In my
twenties I continued involvement with theater and took a public speaking class at
TSU. I also spoke at a summer camp for music on the subject of art and art history
at MTSU. My art was displayed in multiple venues in my hometown. I continue to draw
and paint and enjoy experimenting with pastel, watercolor, crayon, and collage
techniques. I am very thrilled to be taking three classes for this summer session,
and feel that learning about police procedure relates well to previous knowledge
from my criminal law class and time spent working with defense attorney and former
prosecutor Steve Schwartz. I think law and order benefit society and tactful
application of correct procedure is the best way for police to fulfill their duty
to taxpayers. I also think it is possible to restore the public’s faith in the
force through sound human relations, proper procedure, and enhanced community
development. My other classes in Business and International Business Import /Export
theory, will enhance the experience I have taking business law courses and will be
beneficial for any endeavor I may pursue.