Kimberly Branham's Digital Portfolio
Possible career interest
World history, language arts
Over the course of my 10th grade year, my interest in being in a career field of law enforcement/law or politics has grown. I started the year wanting to be a cop or detective, and while I still do, I also would consider possibly pursuing politics. This interest grew mainly in world history and language arts.
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There was one project that really increased my interest in law enforcement specifically and that was the persuasive letter that we wrote in world history and in language arts. What we did was choose a topic from our globalization unit and decide on an issue that needed change. We picked a person or organization and wrote them a persuasive letter on why they should change the issue using techniques we learned in language arts. I chose the topic of human trafficking because I already had prior interest in the topic and wanting to try to help with the issue. I wrote to the head of the U.S. Department of Education saying there should be a unit taught in schools teaching about the dangers and signs of human trafficking to help students to protect themselves and those around them from this forced slavery. As I said, I already had prior interest, but doing this letter I had to do more research on the topic, so I learned a lot more than I knew before. The reason this made me want to join law enforcement was because I want to be able to do something to change or help. In my letter I talk about signs and indicators for human trafficking victims, but I feel if I were a police officer I would have more resources and ability to actually be able to help people in this situation.
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Now, for an almost unrelated topic, I also had an interest in politics happen this year. This interest also happened in world history, but not necessarily with a specific project, just the whole year in general. Throughout this year we have learned about imperialism, genocide, communist states, and globalization. Politics are involved in near everything in these units, but it was not the good that drew my interest, but the bad. For the sake of time I will focus on one unit, and that is the genocide unit. There were conflicts that, whether you consider it a genocide or not, mass amounts of a population was murdered so the perpetrators should be punished, right? For example, after each genocide, punishments
are given out to the people who were involved in the killings. After the rape of Nanking, the Japanese Imperial Army should have all been punished in some way for the brutal rapes and murders of so many Chinese but instead, many were let off with no punishment. The same with Nazis after the Holocaust. Nazi scientists even came to the U.S. to assist with NASA, with no punishment despite their involvement in these crimes. Clearly, I believe they all should have been punished in some way for what they did to others, but that was not the case. The best way to attempt any type of change would be to be on the inside and encourage them to change and improve.
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These two projects/units have really helped to increase my interest in law enforcement and politics by making me more aware of the issues in our world that need change and I believe trying to make change is a step forward. Even if I do not accomplish change, I will still be helping people and that is my main goal.