Senior Magazine

KISMET Honors Portfolio Volume I University Honors 424 March 12, 2018

/ˈkiz-mit, -ˌmet/ (n.) An irresistable course of life events; the will of God. “The series of events I experienced these past four years were kismet, they were fated to be.”

Contents

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UHNR 224 - Religious Understanding Critical Analysis Troye Sivan’s Heaven

UHNR 231 - Global Cultures in Context Oral Presentation Hinduism

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PSYC 488 - Seminar in Political Psychology Arguementation #BlackLivesMatter

ARTS 194 - PS/Illustrator Image Creation Creative work Various Art Pieces

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UHNR 101 - Beginning to Seek Draft 1 of my Worldview The Expression of the Individual

UHNR 114/114L The Scientific Process Technical Work The Caffiene Experiment

UHNR 201 - Seminar in Rhetoric Draft 2 of my Worldview The Individual

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UHNR 314 - Changing Communities Collaborative Work Riverside Improv and Acting

UHNR 354 - Community Involvement Collaborative Work Religion and Sexuality Awareness Week

UHNR 364 - Scholarship Colloquium Proposal Scholarship Proposal

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UHNR 404: Religious, Moral, and Social Aspects of Psychology Reflective Work Development Analysis

UHNR 424: Seeking, Knowing, Serving Worldview Final Draft On the Advancement of my Worldview Through the Years

Appendix A UHNR 464: Honors Scholarship Project Technical Work Marketing to Millennials

Dear Reader, In the last two years of my time at La Sierra University, I have found myself becoming more and more introspective. Prior to this look inward, I did not spend any time getting to know myself. You, dear reader, are getting a peak into my mind, a look I myself had not taken until a few years ago. I have grown a lot in the past four years, not just in writing style and content, but also in my beliefs and the way I evaluate the world. This will be especially evident from the drafts of my worldview. I am a different person now than I was my freshman year.

If you are looking at my work in comparison to those of my class, you will probably take note of the magazine style I am using. I do this because, for the out of class work I needed to display in my portfolio, I choose phots (both those I have taken or had taken of me) and my poetry. This combination will hopefully give insight to the creative side of my mind.

I hope you will leave this project with a better understanding of me. It is strange for me, leaving my work as a stand-alone. I wish I were there to explain these works to you as you read. I will do my best to articulate what I think you need to know in short paragraphs and poems before and after my papers. I hope you enjoy what I have chosen to do with the past four years here at La Sierra University.

Thank you

i spent all my years learning everything about everything except myself

worldview

Royce, Andrew Tolan, and I on a hike. 2014.

This work is the very first worldview paper I wrote when I came to this university. Here, my worldview is very largely dictated by who my friends were in high school. My high school friends and I weren’t exactly “popular.” In fact, a lot of us were bullied at some point in our lives.

Because of this, I was very concerned with making sure everyone around me felt loved and accepted. This view is expressed here in my world view.

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The Expression of the Individual Worldview Draft 1 Fall 2014

Everyone should have a chance to express themselves and be who they want to be without being ridiculed by others. My world view is all about the individual. It is important to me that each and every individual feels free to do what they want to do and be who they want to be without worrying about the ridicule of others.

Too many times in our world people get put down for who they are, what they are interested in and what they believe in. This has to stop. The world needs diversity to make it go around and when we ridicule those who are different from us, we are promoting a like-minded and dull way of life. If everyone were to fit one stereotype, we wouldn’t have diversity of ideas, actions, hobbies, or jobs. If we lived in a world where everyone is the same, we would be intellectually flaccid, culturally dull, and spiritually weak.

Why, then, is it so hard for humans to accept those of different cultures?

We know, at least on a subconscious level, that diversity is necessary, yet when we are faced with diversity we balk and ridicule instead of accepting someone for who they are and what

they believe in. We do this because we are scared of that which we do not know.

In my daily life, I try not to let that which I do not know scare me. I try to embrace everyone’s cultures and promote a safe environment where those around me can feel free to voice their beliefs without worrying that I will ridicule them. I allow my world view to dictate how I behave when meeting someone for the first time, how I react when presented with a situation with which I have never experienced before, and even what I choose to study while here at college. I find that if I remember the importance of allowing people to be comfortable around me, I am able to make friends who judge me as someone they can talk to; someone they can call upon as a friend. I believe that it’s important that I act kindly to everyone that I come in contact with. To those in the world that I come in contact with I choose to be a friend because in the world, someone is out to get us at every corner and it helps to have someone you can count on.

Costume Skate Night ft Nikki and Kelly. 2014.

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Jieun & I celebrating the end of Freshman year.

2015

caffeine experiment

The caffeine experiment – the only scientific work you will find in this portfolio. This paper comes to you from the very short-lived time in my college career where I was a science major. I worked on this paper with a partner, Griffen Winget, and I ended up doing most of the work in the end. Looking back on this brings a lot of frustration to me because, although this was the first of many papers in which I would choose a topic and create an experiment on it (an activity I have grown to love over the years), it felt like a lot of work that I had to do myself.

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The Caffeine Experiment Technical Work Winter 2015 Introduction In the Ethiopian Highlands, coffee grows today as it did centuries ago when it was first discovered. Legend has it that Kaldi, a goatherd, discovered coffee after noticing that his goats did not want to sleep at night after eating from the tree. Later, in the fifteenth century, Arabs began cultivating and trading coffee among Persia, Egypt, Syria and Turkey1. Despite the extensive cultivation and trade of coffee, it was not until 1819 that the exact structure of a caffeine molecule was discovered. Friedlieb Runge was the first to analyze and isolate a pure sample of caffeine².

Today, there is extensive knowledge regarding the state and effects of caffeine. Caffeine is a plant product that is commonly found in coffee beans, tea, soft drinks, cocoa and chocolate. It acts as a stimulant increasing heart rate, blood sugar levels, blood pressure, and body temperature. If someone is feeling anxious, caffeine is not for them. A cup of coffee can exacerbate the feelings of anxiety and be detrimental to one’s ability to study3. Along with anxiety, caffeine can cause other adverse side effects such as dehydration, dizziness, anxiety, insomnia and confusion4. It can also have negative effects on women who are pregnant or likely to become pregnant, increasing their risk of difficult conception and miscarriage. And caffeine does not stop there, coffee can cause an upset stomach, worsen ulcers, raise blood cholesterol and increase risk of heart disease³. Many people do not properly understand these adverse effects of

coffee, nor do they understand their levels of caffeine intake. Everything from a chocolate brownie to Coca Cola has caffeine. Most people ingest upwards of 50mg of caffeine per day5.

With all this caffeine intake, people should be more aware of what it does to their bodies. In technical terms, caffeine inhibits the enzyme in your body that regulates glucose production. The more glucose in your body, the more energy there is available6. In the brain, caffeine blocks the receptor for the neurotransmitter Adenosine, causing it to stay in the brain for longer. Adenosine indirectly keeps one alert and awake throughout the day, and, by causing this chemical to stay in the brain for longer, caffeine is effectively assuring that those who ingest it are awake for long periods of time7.

Many people take caffeine for the bit of energy it is able to provide. Research shows, however, that coffee doesn’t just provide a bit of energy, it can actually improve one’s capacity to do work or exercise. The EFSA, the European Food Safety Authority, has confirmed a cause and effect relationship between increased caffeine intake and endurance. They have found this positive correlation in sports such as running, cycling or rowing due to studies that show that ingesting a moderate amount of caffeine before and/or during exercise increased the times recorded over set difference8. Not only does coffee increase endurance, but also improves memory retention. Researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that the popular stimulant can function as a memory enhancer. These researchers conducted a double blind trial in which participants who did not regularly have coffee were either received a placebo or a caffeine tablet. They were allowed to study a series of images and, 24 hours later, those who had taken the caffeine tablet were more likely to recognize the difference between two similar but not identical items9.

It’s obvious that coffee has many different effects on our minds and bodies, but the question is, can one get a caffeinated “high” without all the

adverse side effects. This is the basis for the connection between caffeine and the placebo effect. The placebo effect, according to Harvard School of Public Health, is a favorable response to a medical intervention — a pill, a procedure, a counseling session etc— that doesn’t have a direct physiological effect10. Expectations have a lot to do with this effect. If people believe they will feel better by taking a drug, then, perhaps, the power of persuasion alone will be enough to produce the effects of this drug. An exam-

Figure 1: The average energy levels, on a self-

ple of this is a study done at Capital University. This experiment studied the effects of caffeine on short term memory. By administering both a placebo and a caffeinated energy drink, researchers were able to test if there was a correlation between caffeine and short term memory. They found that those whose drink were caffeinated performed the same as those who had the placebo. This shows that coffee really has no effect on short term memory.

For this project, we will be using the placebo effect to test if the mind can be tricked into feeling the effects of caffeine, without actually ingesting caffeine. The experiment will be a single blind study in which participants will receive a cup of coffee that

is either caffeinated or decaffeinated.

One group will be given decaffeinated coffee and told it is caffeinated, another will be given decaffeinated and told it is decaffeinated, the next will be given caffeinated and told it’s caffeinated, and the final group will be given caffeinated and told it is decaf.

The purpose of this is to see if those who are given decaffeinated coffee react the same way as those who are given regular coffee. They will be required to take a survey after they have the coffee which asks them to docu-

-reported scale of one to five, of those who were given caffeine.

ment how they felt after drinking it.

We want to know if telling subjects who have ingested decaffeinated coffee that they ingested caffeinated coffee will unconsciously create a placebo like observer bias where they see symptoms of coffee where there are none.

Our hypothesis is that the distortion of the test subjects’ perceptions through intentionally misleading them about the caffeine content of coffee will lead the subjects to express behavior contradictory to the known effects of the ingested beverage. What this means is that when the subjects ingest what they believe to be caffeinated coffee they will experience the effects of coffee, such as the jitters, increased energy, and clarity of mind.

Materials and Methods The majority of this experiment took place outside the commons area on a day where high amounts of foot traffic was expected. The first phase of the experiment was the setting up. Three tables were placed in front of the commons area, and on these tables were three different coffee machines. In the first machine, decaffeinated Columbian coffee, the Folgers brand, was brewing. In the second and third machine, regular black Columbian coffee of the same brand was brewing. While the coffee brewed, cups were being labeled.

There are four different groups within the study. The first group was given caffeinated coffee and told it was caffeinated, the second group was given caffeinated and told it was decaffeinated, the third group was given decaffeinated and told it was caffeinated and the fourth group was given decaffeinated and told it was caffeinated. In order to avoid confusion, each group was set up on the table with two rows of ten coffee cups, each with the group number underneath.

As the coffee began to brew, the cups were filled according to their number.

While setting up, pre-test surveys and informed consent forms were placed where people would most likely go first, when they saw the booth set up.

When subjects arrived at the booth, they were required to sign an informed consent and asked to take a short pre-test survey. The pre-test survey (see appendix 1) was a pre-screening process. Those who drank more than 5 cups of coffee a week were given coffee, but informed that their information could not be used. After the pre-test forms were filled out, each subject was given tickets. The ticket reel used came with two tickets of the same number, one with nothing one the back and the other with a place for subjects to write their name, email address and phone number on. The subject was required to fill out the fields for name, email address and phone number, and return that ticket, and they were told to keep the other ticket with the empty back. On the ticket whose back had

been filled out, a group number was written to keep track of which subject was placed in what group. Also, the number that came prerecorded on the ticket was placed on each subject’s form to maintain anonymity during statistical analysis.

After the subjects had gotten their ticket and had given us their name, phone number and email, we gave them their coffee. Each subject was placed in a group depending on what order they arrived at the booth. The first to arrive was placed in group one, the second in group two and so on and so forth. Finally, they were also given a posttest survey and told to text or email their respond within the following three hours. Many of the subjects responded a day later, after prompting from one of the experimenters. The booth in front of the commons was set up for an estimated three hours.

The following weekend people were called in individually to participate in the study. A cup of coffee, or several cups if multiple subjects were called in at a time, were made prior to their arrival. Each person had to fill out a pretest survey as well as informed consent. After these subjects information was collected, they were also given a ticket to fill out and a ticket to keep. Their group was determined by the order in which they came to participate in the experiment. If they were among the first to show up for coffee that day, they were placed in group one, then, when the coffee for group one ran out, the next few were placed in group two and so on and so forth. These subjects were also given a posttest survey and told to communicate their response in their method of choice. From the first portion of the experiment there were 24 responses, and from the second portion there were 32.

After all the responses were received, the data was analyzed. To analyze the data, a JMP Statistical Analysis software package was used to run an Analysis of Variance and a Contingency Chi Square analyses.

The Analysis of Variance was used to test if giving a subject caffeine af17

fected the energy level they reported and the contingency chi squared was used to test if what they were told was independent of whether or not they crashed.

Data and Results The participants were told to rate their energy levels on a scale of one to five. Figure one shows a great difference between those who were told they were given caffeine and those who were told they were given decaf.

Those who were told they were given caffeine and told it was caffeinated reported an average energy level of 4.2.

Those who were told it was decaffeinated reported an average energy level of 2. Those who were told they were given decaffeinated caffeine seemed to believe that they had lower energy levels than those who were told that their coffee was caffeinated.

There is not much of a difference between the energy levels of those who were told their coffee was decaffeinated and those who were told it was caffeinated. Those who were told it was decaffeinated had an average energy level of 1.2, as shown in Figure 2. whereas those who were told the coffee was caffeinated were exhibited an average energy level of 1.3. Both groups seemed to experience relatively low energy levels despite what they were told.

An analysis of variance was done on those given caffeinate coffee ver-

sus those given decaffeinated coffee.

According to this analysis, there is a significant difference in the energy reported for those who were given caffeine. Testing the null hypothesis of whether there was a significant change in energy level reported due to the amounts of caffeine given to a subject yielded a p < 0.0001. This caused us to reject our null hypothesis and conclude that there is a very significant difference between the energy levels of those who were given caffeine and those who were given decaffeinated coffee. Using the analysis of variance we also tested the null hypothesis that what the students were told made no difference in the reported energy level. This yielded p= 0.0174 which caused us to reject our null hypothesis and conclude that there was a significant difference between the energy levels of those who were told they had caffeine and those who were told they had decaffeinated coffee.

A high number of participants who had caffeine recounted that they experienced a crash after drinking the coffee. There were no participants who had decaffeinated caffeine who experienced a crash, therefore there results are not included in the graph.

Whether or not they were given caffeine was a determinate of their crash.

What they were told seemed to have less of an influence on whether or not they experienced a crash, however.

Using a contingency chi-square

Figure 2: Participants given decaffeinated coffee exhibit a difference in average energy levels between those who were told it was decaffeinated and those who were told it was caffeinated.

test, it was found that reporting of a crash was dependent on what they were given and what they were told.

We tested the hypothesis that whether they crashed or not was independent of what they were given and found p < 0.0001. This caused us to reject the hypothesis and conclude that a crash was dependent upon what they were given. We then tested the hypothesis whether they crashed or not was independent of what they were told and found that p=0.020. This caused us to reject the hypothesis and conclude that a crash was very much dependent on what they were told.

Discussion Through statistical analysis it was discerned that the results supports the hypothesis. The fifty six subjects were divided into four different groups. After running an ANOVA [Analysis of Variance] test as well as contingency Chi-square analyses it was found that there is a significant difference between the four categories. The ANOVA test had two groups, those who were given caffeinated coffee and those who were given decaffeinated coffee. These groups encompassed the four groups from the original experiment. The given groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s null hypothesis that there is no difference was rejected due to a P value of < 0.0001. In terms of a global experimental outlook this means that the subjects who were given caf-

Figure 3: The percent of subjects that reported having experienced a crash after drinking the caffeine

feine, regardless of what they were told, showed an increase in energy levels. When preforming the same test, the told’s group null hypothesis that there is no significant energy increase was also proven false with a p-value of p < 0.0174. This means that the subjects who were told they were given caffeine showed an increase in energy levels regardless of what they actually ingested. This shows a statistically significant correlation between told or given and energy levels which supports our hypothesis. The ANOVA shows the placebo effect in action while the Chi-square analysis shows a co-dependency, specifically between given or told and if the subjects crashed or not. The contingency chi-square test first tested the null hypothesis that whether the subject crashed or not is independent of what they were given. With a p-value of p < 0.0001 the null hypothesis is rejected which means there is a statistically significant dependency between crashing and whether they were given caffeine. The same test was done with the told values and a p-value p < 0.0020 which rejects the null hypothesis thus showing a dependency between crashing and what the subjects were told. The goal of the experiment was to ultimately test the strength of the placebo effect as it pertains to caffeine. When looking at the outcomes of the two tests it shows an overwhelming support of the placebo effect, however, when looking at the raw data, some discrepancies arise.

In the raw data fifteen people were given decaf and told that it was decaf; none of those subjects reported any signs of a crash. People who were given decaf and told it was caffeinated also did not report any kind of crash, this is the discrepancy. You would expect a certain percentage of people to report that they experienced a crash because they were told they had caffeine, even though in reality they had decaf. This could be due to the fact that people who inputted their results did so mindlessly and therefore the data is not accurate.

It could also be as a result of the fact that many of the subjects responded

much later after they were prompted to respond by one of the experimenters.. If the experiment were to be redone it would benefit from a larger number of answers in each group to allow for a clearer answer. One data set that was left out of the statistical analysis was the question “did you experience any jitters?”; this was left out due to a possible redundancy. When looking at the raw data, however, over fifty percent of subjects from group three (given decaf told caf) said they experienced the jitters. This could mean that this group felt as if crash was too strong of a word to describe their symptoms but that they still felt caffeine like effects. If the statistical analysis was to be redone it would most likely benefit the experiment to include the jitters question. If being redone another addition that would add more data for analysis would be to add a larger variety of questions that go more in depth. This would, of course, require more time dedicated from subjects and thus extra measures must be taken to ensure proper answers. If a more in-depth post test was given it could give the scientists a detailed look at the exact effects that their tests were having on their subjects. This would give a better answer to their question and strengthen their results.

In a study done by Beedie CJ, Stuart EM, Coleman DA, and Foad AJ researching the placebo effects of caffeine on cycling performance researchers designed an experiment to test whether perceived caffeine intake affects cycling performance. They selected six well-trained male cyclists and made them take two baseline 10 km trials and three experimental 10 km trials. Each subject was informed that they would receive a placebo, 4.5 mg of caffeine, or 9 mg of caffeine.

However, only placebos were administered in all experimental conditions.

Semi structured interviews were also conducted to explore the subjects’ experience of the effects of the capsules before and after revealing the deception12. This study is similar in many ways to the one done by the scientists in that both focused on the efficacy of

the placebo effect. Where they used cyclists performance the scientists used subjective symptom analysis.

The researchers results fall into one main category which is power increase or decrease. The cyclists who believed they received a placebo, 4.5 mg or 9 mg of caffeine showed an increase in base power level by -1.4%, 1.3% and 3.1% respectively12. This means that there was a direct correlation between the placebo effect and their ability to preform physical exercise. This is a parallel result to our findings. The only difference is that they measured physical differences instead of side effects.

In the second study done by M. Fillmore and M. Vogel-Sprott dealing with caffeine and motor performance, the researches tested four different groups of males and their increase or decrease in motor function dependent on whether they received a placebo or not. “Three groups expected to receive caffeine but received a placebo.

Prior to the placebo, two of the groups received information about the effect of caffeine on a motor skill task which led one group E(+) to expect enhanced performance, and the other E(−) to expect impairment. The third placebo group received no information E(?). A control group E(0) received no beverage, so neither caffeine nor any effect on performance was expected.”13 The results showed that the group who expected positive results garnered positive results while the impaired group felt worse. This shows that the placebo created these responses thus validating our study through their results.

The placebo effect has been shown many times to be almost equal in power to the actual product. In this case, placebo has been shown to have the same effects as caffeine. The Subject’s presupposed notion of what is being taken into their bodies is more important than what is actually being ingested, according to our study. Our study can be applied to more than just caffeine. Next time you eat sugar, take prescription pills, drink coffee, take a minute and think about what it is really doing to your body and what you think is happening.

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First Honors Banquet. 2015.

The images on the page next to this feature pictures from my time in Italy. I visited Italy with the Adventist Colleges Abroad program at La Sierra University.

This trip to Italy was very instrumental in the forming of my worldview, as I will talk about in later papers. This is one of my fondest memories of my college years because it allowed me to find my love of traveling.

Friends I made in Italy. 2015.

Bookstore in Venice, Italy. 2015

Taken from a gondola ride in Venice, Italy. 2015

Mansion in Italy. 2015.

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there are several things in life that I wish were mine: an eternity, and Italy, and you

worldview

Pre-Medical Society female officers taking a nap together at beach vespers. 2015.

This is the second draft of my worldview written during my sophomore year of college. This worldview is also very influenced by my high school friends and what it was like living in my home town. It also focuses very heavily on God and my dream of being a doctor one day. In reality, a lot of my musings about God are not very sincere. I was writing at a time in my life when I was just beginning to consider religion again, where God was in my mind, but definitely at the forefront. This dream of becoming a doctor that spans the last few paragraphs of my work is no longer. I have decided that being a doctor isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the way for me, but is interesting to see how passionate I once was about it.

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The Individual Worldview Draft 2 Fall 2015 When I was nine years old, my parents moved our family from the Caribbean to America to give my brother and me a better life. There were so many more opportunities available to us in America than there were on our birth island of Jamaica, and substantially more than the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Islands I had been living on since the age of seven. Moving to America not only meant a better life, it also meant a meshing of cultures. Because I spent my most impressionable years here, I started to form ideas and opinions based on what I saw of American life. It was through my interactions with American culture that I formed my world view.

One of the biggest culture shock I faced was the lack of a God-centered society. In Jamaica, there was a Seventh Day Adventist church on every corner; in my small town in California, the majority of the population had never even heard of Seventh Day Adventism. In the

public schools in Jamaica, we prayed in the morning and before every meal, whereas the majority of the students in the public schools here were non church goers or atheist. I remember times when friends would ask me to hang out on Friday nights or Saturdays, and I remember the embarrassment as I made up yet another excuse as to why I couldn’t hang out on those days.

There were times when I became angry with my religion. Sometimes, it felt as if my lack of friends stemmed from the fact that I was never available when everyone else was. No one would want to hang out with me at school if every time they asked to hang out outside of school I declined.

As I entered high school, I began to struggle with more than just my religion, I began to struggle with God. In high school, I made a few friends who had more radical ways of thinking that conflicted many of my families’ ideas.

One friend, Cecilia, was the first feminist I had ever been close to (although, at the time, neither of us had a name

for her pro-female movement). She had moved from Mexico with her family when she was just six years old. Her dad never quite took care of her family as she was expecting him to, so, as the eldest, she began taking care of her younger siblings herself. Then, she began aspiring to bigger, better things. Her dream was to become a doctor, to take care of people while making enough money to live comfortably. She also never wanted to get married. She always told me that she didn’t need a guy to take care of her.

She could take care of herself. This was controversial to me, because, as the bible said, the man was the head of the household. How could Cecilia plan to live a successful life without a husband in her life? Eventually, the thought began settling in my mind as well. While I did want to get married one day, I realized that I didn’t need to sit around and wait for God to put a man in my life for me to be happy. I could be happy all by myself.

Following Cecilia, I met my best friend throughout high school. Her

Second birthday party. 1999.

name was Katelyn. Her family was Mormon, but during her middle school years she had struggled with her identity as a Mormon and had decided that it wasn’t for her. The hardest thing about Mormonism for her was the fact that she was also pansexual and the bible condemned any relationship she would hope to have with a female. In our junior year, she started dating a mutual friend, Olivia. When her parents found out, they tried to “convert” her, showing her videos on why being gay was wrong, trying to convince her to change her ways.

It was during that time that I decided I didn’t want to believe in a God that condoned the torturing of my friends. As I went to Gay-Straight Alliance meetings with her and started meeting people of different sexualities, I realized that they were just like everyone else. It wasn’t fair for God, who preached love, to condemn their love. It was around that time that I became unhappy when I went to church. Every time the preacher would stand on the pulpit and say my best friend was wrong, I became more and

more disgusted.

On top of this, my church preached a removal of Christians from society.

According to them, God wanted us to be different. We weren’t allowed to look the same, dress the same, or act the same as the people of the world. They preached that we should get rid of our secular wants and desires. This meant that I couldn’t indulge in the books I loved to read, the TV shows I loved to watch, and the stories I loved to write.

God was basically telling me to cut everything I loved from my life. The hardest part was the fact that I didn’t have very many friends. The TV shows and books and stories were all I had in the way of happiness and God was up there telling me I wasn’t even allowed that.

I struggled for years with this idea until, finally, I went off to college and stopped going to church all together.

My first two quarters of college, I went to church maybe once. It felt good to be free of God. Until I had my cancer scare.

I was on vacation from school, lying in bed in my old home when all of a sud-

den I felt a sharp pain in my right breast.

I told my mother and she took me to see a gynecologist. That day, as she felt the lump, as she told me it was probably nothing but that she had to check to make sure, my whole life shook. If I were to get breast cancer at the age of 18, if it was terminal and I were to die, everything I dreamed of would be gone. The days leading up to my biopsy, I prayed harder than I had ever prayed before.

I remembered stories of God working great miracles and all I wanted was to be another one of those miracles. I went back to college, not knowing the results.

I dreaded the day I would get the call from my mom, telling me that I did have cancer. A few weeks later, the call came.

It was just a benign lump, most likely caused by the amount of caffeine I had been consuming.

As I pushed the thoughts of cancer to the back of my mind, God stayed at the forefront. At first, it was little things, asking Him for help on tests or even just getting through the day. Then, it was bigger things, asking Him to take me for 27

Sassarini Elementary School 5th Graders. 2007.

a summer abroad; asking Him for a safe trip to Italy and back. During that year, my relationship with God grew more than it had in the past 18 years of my life.

As I began to grow closer to Him, I realized that He put me on this Earth for a reason. I was sent here to help others, specifically as a psychiatrist. My purpose in life is to become a child and developmental psychiatrist. There are many children out there suffering from mental illnesses and many of these illnesses come about in younger years due to bullying. When children are being picked on, whether at home or at school, they begin to think that they are worthless. Sometimes, they even go to extreme measures, trying to change who they are to deter bullies. I want to be the person that tells these children that they are not worthless, that it is okay for them to be who they are. If at the end of my college years, my medical school years, and my residency; if at the end of all my struggles, I have my degree in hand, and I only change one child’s life, that is okay. I just want at least one

child out there struggling to know that the most important person in their life is themselves.

My drive to become a child and developmental psychiatrist stems from the fact that as a child, I too was bullied.

When my family moved to America, we ended up in a small, winery based town in Northern California where the majority of the people were White or Latino.

My family was the only black family in town, I was the only black girl in school.

In my years in Elementary School, I was teased a lot. I didn’t look like everyone else. My hair was always in cornrows, often with beads tied to the end, I had a strange accent and I was darker than everyone else. Because of this, I was mocked incessantly, mostly by the Latinos. They would point and laugh, calling me fea and negrita. Due to their teasing, I developed depression and social anxiety. I was depressed because I knew that every time I went to school, there would be someone there who hated me for reasons beyond my control; I was anxious because I was afraid that when people

looked at me, it would not be me they were seeing, but rather, the color of my skin.

I believe a great injustice was done to me by those boys that teased me. Unfortunately, they did not know better. It is within human nature to fear the unknown. They were not used to seeing people like me, so they got scared, and too often, when people get scared, they lash out. Just because I was different from them, they tried to push me into being like them. Because of their fear of the unknown, they tried to bully me into behaving like the people they knew.

I eventually succumbed to this bullying.

I did everything I could just to fit in.

When my mom would braid my hair for school, I would feel disgusting because I didn’t have hair like the white girls did. Eventually, I started straightening my hair, putting chemicals in it every three months to ensure that it would stay straight like the other girls’ hair did. I spent years perfecting my Californian drawl to the point where I have lost every semblance of my native tongue.

When I go home and I try to speak patois, my cousins laugh, saying I sound like an American.

The media made my drive to become American even worse. It’s hard, when you’re a pre-teen and you’re watching TV, looking at billboards, looking at magazines, and all the people depicted are white, tall, and blonde, the very antithesis of what you are. All my role models growing up were beautiful with fair skin and blonde hair, and deep down inside, I knew I could never be them. My self-esteem was wounded. There was no way for me achieve the beauty that my society seemed to idolize. While I conformed in every means possible, there was always something missing. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized that the media was bullying me too.

Eventually, I got over my depression and my social anxiety, but not without six plus years of heartache and pain.

Looking back at it now, I wish someone had been there for me. I wish someone had told me it was okay to be a negrita, that I wasn’t fea, and that someday I

would be proud to be who I was. I wish someone had told me not to conform, not to denounce every ounce of what made me special just so I could fit in. I wish someone would have told me that in my later years, I would want to wear my hair natural, and the chemicals I had been putting in them would come back to haunt me. I want to be that person for someone else. My dream is to reach out and touch one child’s life, to help them understand that it is okay for them to be unique.

My world view depends largely on the individual. I believe that everyone should have the chance to express themselves freely in our society. This view was not learned, it was informed.

Jamaican society focuses on the family.

It is God first, then the family, then the individual. While this is not necessarily a bad way to live, it gets rid of the individual. It is as if I am a part of the Headley family first, and then I am me. I do not believe that is the way the world should work; I believe, first and foremost, I am me. This belief stems from my emersion

in American culture; the idea fostered

by Americans that the individual is most important in society.

This world view also stems from my faith. God has specially made each and every single one of us, before placing us on this Earth with a purpose. To denounce your individuality is to laugh in the face of God. The Bible says, in Psalms 139:14, “. . . I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” I believe in embracing my individuality because it is the greatest gift God has given to me.

Finally, my world view depends on my experiences, because of the years I spent trying to change myself, and the years following where I regretted that change, I believe each person should experience the world for themselves, deciding what makes them happy. They should be given the opportunity to perceive, to learn, and to dream, without extreme influences from others. Because of this, I live life largely focusing on myself and those around me. I try not to judge, but rather embrace that which I do not know and promote a safe environment for all.

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Taken on an airplane ride home. 2016.

Heaven Troye Sivan is another left over relic from my high school years.

I spent a lot of those years obsessed over TV characters and YouTubers, and Troye Sivan was very much at the forefront of these obsessions. It is interesting to think about him in the context of my past because, as my second world view explained, I was never close to God in my high school years.

It is easy to see how the ideas of secularists like Sivan could have contributed to that.

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Troye Sivan in a photoshoot for Buzzfeed. 2016.

Troye Sivan’s Heaven Critical Analysis Winter 2016 Troye Sivan started out as a YouTuber who did covers of popular songs in 2013 and 2014. In 2015 he started working on his album Blue Neighbourhood, which featured sixteen songs, three of which he pre-released in a music video series of the same name. One of the sixteen songs, HEAVEN, was written

by Sivan as a commentary on his struggle with his sexuality and his relationship with God. From birth, Sivan knew something was different about him. He says that even at a young age the word gay would scare him because deep down he always knew it was his reality. It wasn’t until he was fourteen and a half however, that he realized that he was gay. He came out to his father half a year later. In the moments before his coming out, he asked his father if there was anything he wanted to change about their religion. His father responded and said that he didn’t agree with how their religion treated gays. With that affirmation, Sivan got the strength to come out to his parents. In the years preceding and proceeding his come out, Sivan battled a lot with the idea that God would not accept him because of his homosexuality. Later, as he was writing Blue Neighbourhood, he placed his thoughts and feelings into a song, and thus created HEAVEN. Heaven begins with the lyric, “The truth runs wild/like a tear down a cheek.” This first lyric is a testament to how much of a hard time Sivan had both while suppressing his homosexuality and during his come out. Before his come out, he tried

to suppress his sexuality, but like a tear, the truth eventually found its way out. Also, like a tear, once the truth was out, there was no way for him to take it back. This line could also be a reference to how much he cried as he came out to his father.

The proceeding lines, “Trying to save face, and daddy heart break/ I’m lying through my teeth,” shows how afraid he was of his father’s opinion. He was worried that when he came out, he would break his father’s heart. So, he spent years lying to himself and everyone around him, trying to save face, trying not to embarrass himself. In the second stanza of the verse one, Sivan goes on to explain how hard it was to fake his sexuality. “The voice inside,” he writes, “Has been eating at me.” Its not entirely clear which voice he is talking about. Perhaps it was a nagging voice of doubt as he tried to figure out his sexuality, or perhaps it was a lingering question of whether or not God would still love him if he found himself to be homosexual. Either way, these voices made it hard for him to live truly. He said that he was “Trying to replace the love that I fake/with what we both need.” Sivan tried to fake love with girls, being what they wanted him to be. Unfortunately, he was not able to fake it for long.

The third stanza parallels the first, saying “The truth runs wild/ like kids on concrete.” This goes back to him trying to suppress his sexuality. When kids get a chance to run wild, especially after a long day at school, it is almost impossible to get them to stop. They’re uncontrollable. Perhaps Sivan felt as if once he told the truth, it would be wild, uncontrollable and unstoppable. Once it was out there, he would never be able to take it back, and anyone he disappointed in the process could hate him forever. He must have been driven crazy by these thoughts and his imagination, because the next two lines reads, “Trying to sedate, my mind in its cage/and numb what I see.” He tried to stop his darkened thoughts about people being

disappointed in him. He tried to numb his imagination as it transformed his reality into something gruesome. “Awake,” he wrote, “Wide eyed/I’m screaming at me.” He was loosing sleep just at the thought that he might be gay. He was screaming at himself because he was not growing up to be the man he thought he would be. Most of this anger and this lack of sleep came from his battle with his faith. The next lines read, “Trying to keep faith and picture his face/ staring up at me.” Sivan had a lot of faith growing up as a young Jewish boy. The hardest part about coming to terms with his sexuality, according to him, was the fact that before he even got out of bed in the morning, he was a sinner, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Another big deciding factor was the fact that he always wanted to have kids. The face that he’s picturing is the face of a future son. At the time he believed that if he was gay, if he came out, truly having a child with his spouse was something he would never be able to do.

As the song moved in to the chorus, he begins singing the words, “Without losing a piece of me/How do I get to heaven?/Without changing a part of me/How do I get to heaven?” As stated before, Sivan struggled with the impact his sexuality would have on his faith. He wanted to reach heaven one day, to find the ultimate bliss and happiness, but he felt he couldn’t do that without compromising who he was.

“All my time is wasted,” He sings.

“Feeling like my hearts mistaken/ So if I’m losing a piece of me/Maybe I don’t want heaven?” This is a major turning point in the song, because it imitates him coming to the realization that he was not willing to give up who he was just to be right with God. He is a little bit bitter in his wording here. Perhaps this is because at the time he felt like he was wasting his time on a middle ground of despair. He couldn’t be happy with a boy he loved and he couldn’t be happy with his religion. He had to choose a side, so, he chose the side 33

that would give him selfpeace. He came to accept himself, and in accepting himself, realized that heaven is not somewhere he wanted to be after all.

The next verse is sung

by Sivan’s colleague Betty Who. “The truth runs wild,” Betty Who sings, “Like the rain to the sea/ Trying to set straight the lines that I trace/To find some release.” The beginning of this stanza again parallels the first line of the first stanza. The truth was running wild for Sivan and he could not take it back. Hiding his sexuality was getting to him.

It was lowering his self worth, and all he wanted was to find some release.

This release would only come with the release of the hold his religion had on him. The next few lines repeat “The voice inside/ Has been eating at me,” and continues with “Trying to embrace the picture I paint/And color me free.”

Sivan was finally embracing who he was. He realized that the only way to be truly happy, the only way to find the release spoken about in the few lines above, was to release what was holding him back. The song goes back to the chorus, but this time, as he sings “Maybe I don’t want heaven,” there is more force behind it. He was gaining momentum.

He was on his way to finding who he really wanted to be.

The bridge between the chorus and the final stanza cries, “So I’m counting to fifteen.” This little repeated mantra is a double entendre.

First, this could be him counting to fifteen to remain calm as life crumpled around him, as who he was changed forever. Perhaps, when the anxiety and fear of leaving his faith behind would come to him, he would have to count to fifteen to calm himself down. On the other hand, this could be him counting down the days until he turned fifteen. It was at fifteen that Sivan had the power to come out to his parents and to accept himself fully. It was at fifteen that Sivan finally shared himself with the world. As the song ends, Sivan denounces his faith in favor of being happy with who he truly is.

I believe this song addresses a generation. Before, Homosexuality was widely believed to be a sin.

Those who were homosexuals lived in fear that if they made their sexuality known, they would be ridiculed, mocked, and even killed.

Within the past fifteen years, however, homosexuality has become more widely accepted and this has given many people the courage to come out to their families and peers. This is quite possibly because of the shift in modern day religion.

Cimmino and Latin, in their book Shopping for faith: American Religion in the New Millennium, speak about a difference in the religious experience in Northern America.

One of their points speaks about a “pick and choose” approach to faith in which people will choose what they like about their religious belief and leave what they don’t. As that occurs in our society today, I believe people who were unable to reconcile their faith and their lifestyle before, are now able to serve God without a traditionalist view point. This feeds

into the gay culture because young men and women are now able to keep their faith and their sexuality.

Cimmino and Latin also points out that the religious will cross the border to the secular side. This also explains the shift in American culture because as people become less religious, the less they worry about the bible and its traditional doctrine.

These people, the ones who struggle with faith and sexuality, are the ones that Sivan address.

It is important to note, however, that while Sivan reaches out to the religious homosexuals, he himself has denounced his faith and reached over to the more secular side. Sivan writes, in review of the song, “I understand there’s a lot of Christian gay people or Jewish gay people or Muslim gay people who have completely found peace within their faith and sexuality, but for me it was always a bit of a struggle. There was a time when I was trying hard to keep faith and kind of set the relationship in my mind but I don’t know if I ever really got there.” Despite this fact I think this song is able to reach out to both the previously religious and the currently religious. This is because of the fact that Sivan posts his fear as a question. He says, “Maybe I don’t want Heaven?” For the previously religious there is a finality in that statement. They don’t want anything to do with God or Heaven.

For the ones that are currently religious, maybe they don’t want that side of religion, maybe the fact that the bible calls homosexuality a sin is one of the doctrines they choose to denounce.

Sivan succeeds in communicating with his intended audience. The song fully captures the struggle homosexuals must go through when trying to make amends with their faith. He starts out weak, but even-

tually finds his momentum. By the end of the song, he is focusing more on himself and his happiness rather than the Jewish doctrine that he grew up with. He may not connect with everyone, but there is something about telling a personal story that brings one closer to their peers.

I think most people who have been in his situation, upon hearing the song, will either identify with him or sympathize with him. On a broader scope, you could say that Sivan’s audience is just young adults. In this case, these young adults will also experience what Cimmino and Latin described as a movement from more tradition religious doctrines. Them too will be more accepting of Sivan’s struggle, and though many may not be homosexual, they will at least be able to sympathize with Sivan.

In communicating with his audience, Sivan uses many different artistic styles. The first and most obvious is the parallelism in his stanzas.

“The truth runs wild,” Sivan and Who sing at three different points in the song. They liken the uncontrollable nature of the truth of sexuality to tears falling, to children running, to rain on the sea. Something must be said about the imagery here. As Sivan comes to terms with his sexuality and loosing his faith, he must have cried more often than not, he must have kissed the thought of having children goodbye, he must have lived in endless rainy days, drowning in the sea of his thoughts. Not only is Sivan saying that once the truth is out, it will run wild, and he will never be able to get it back, Sivan is also saying that once the truth is out, his life will be filled with tears, he wont have the happiness of children, and he wont see sunny days ever again.

This parallelism perfectly explains all of Sivan’s fears. These fears in and of themselves would be enough

for many people to turn completely to religion, so that truth couldn’t ruin their lives, but Sivan pushed through. Another important area of parallelism in this work, is the repetition of the phrase, “How do I get to Heaven?” This is his main struggle through out. It feels as if it is a plea to God and it can be likened to the prophets of old. It brings with it the imagery of Jacob wrestling with the Angel, of Job asking Why God? Here is this modern man looking up to God and asking why he must denounce pieces of himself to get to heaven. The parallelism of the entirety of the work showed that on one hand, Sivan did not want a terrible life but on the other hand, he did not want to give up pieces of himself just so he could one day make it to the promise land.

As a heterosexual, overtly spiritual female, I am only able to sympathize with Sivan. However, I sympathize on a much deeper level than most. I have been watching Sivan’s YouTube videos for about three years. I fell in love with him as a Junior in high school and I have been watching his videos ever since. I think that watching him grow up, singing to pursue his dreams, making friends, and eventually finding the nerves to tell his coming out story, caused me to become deeply invested in his well being. The first time he told his coming out story I was so proud of him. Now, as I listen to his lyrics, my heart breaks to think that he had such a hard time coming to terms with himself.

It makes me angry at those who preach the wrongness of homosexuality. Many religious people choose to shun those who have accepted themselves as gay, pushing them out of the religious community. I have experienced first hand, both from Troye and from friends I have

shared, how important it is that we preach how loving and kind of a man Jesus was. If Jesus walked the Earth with us today, I do not believe he would be happy to see us push away an entire community all because of close-mindedness.

In an interview with OUT magazine, Sivan talks about the terrifying thoughts he had as a fourteen-year-old. As a child he would wonder how God could hate him. The thought of this makes me angry. Youths only think this way because of messages being pedaled by bigoted Christians, even those of my own church.

Often, Christians over look important messages in the Bible. To those that Sivan may have heard saying that he was a sin, I say let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

To those that call him despicable and unworthy, I want to remind that ALL have sinned and ALL fall short of the glory of God. The greatest commandment in the Bible tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. I will practice these commandments every day of my life, and as I listen Blue Neighbourhood on repeat, I will turn the volume up and sing along to this song, because Troye and everyone else struggling with their homosexuality and their religion deserve the right to Heaven.

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Hinduism Three Main Hindu Gods Oral Presentation Spring 2016

These are slides from a presentation I did on Hinduism in my sophomore year of college.

While this presentation was not groundbreaking in anyway, learning about Hinduism was. I had my first exposure to Hinduism in the Honors class Religious Understandings. I fell in love with it instantly. I loved the idea that God could be many different people in one. Going to Malaysia and Singapore in the year following would increase my love for Hinduism.

The first of the three Gods is Brahma and he is known as the creator. Legend has it that he created the world simply by speaking it into existing. He also creates the beings and gods with his mind.

He succumbs to influences, allowing them to impact what he creates. When he is under the influence of good elements he creates gods and when he is under the influence of bad elements he creates demons.

Vishnu is the protector of the world that Brahma creates. He is said to have taken nine forms over the eons through which he comes to the world and protects it. His most famous form is Krishna. Like the story of the Christian God, he is said to have come to earth in the form of a baby. Another interesting Tidbit about Vishnu is that some Hindus believe that he was once incarnated into Buddha.

Shiva, the antithesis of Brahma, is known as the destroyer. He has a third eye which is omnipotent and all powerful. This eye is said to be able to grant wisdom or to destroy. Because of these powers, he is said to be the most supreme of all the gods.

There is a specific sect of Hinduism that focuses only on serving him. This is called Shivaism. This religion is thought to precede the origin of Hinduism.

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Mosque in Malaysia. 2016.

Malaysia + Singapore The Honors Global Cultures in Context course brought me to Malaysia and Singapore for three weeks between my Sophomore and Junior year. This was a great experience, because it introduced me to a culture I had never experienced before, thus expanding my worldview.

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Various images taken on my trip to Malaysia and Singapore. 2016

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the breath in her longs brought fire with every word allowing her to create life -Ode to Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth

2016-2017 Red Pill Improv Team . 2016

riverside improv + act

ting This is a collaborative work that I did with two of my classmates, Lindsay Gomez and Kelly Larios. This paper takes our collective interests in acting and the arts and postulates how we can use these interests to help to children in need. We came up with an idea of developing a five-week improv and acting course that we could bring to middle schools.

We thought that this would be great for schools with little to no funding for the arts.

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Riverside Improv & Acting Collaborative Work Fall 2016 Background and Purpose In and around the area of Riverside there are a number of elementary, middle, and high schools that do not have enough funds to properly provide an art program for their students. According to PBS, schools in the United States, are focusing mostly on common core subject such as reading and math, and this means that, when budget is low, art programs are the first to go. It is well known that certain areas in and around Riverside are very poor. This means that there are many schools in these areas that donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have very many art programs.

Art is important for students because it has many developmental benefits.

PBS claims that art programs can help with motor skills, language development, decision making, visual learning, inventiveness, cultural awareness, and improved academic performance. Through this project we will bring art to underprivileged schools in Riverside, California.

Situation/Need We have observed a need for artistic outlets in the district. The Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) made provisions for several music and athletics programs14 but not for any creative writing or theater programs. This format of a curriculum is crucial for child development and can be a positive impact on young peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lives. Psychological studies show that children with PTSD often benefit from writing programs15, these programs are clearly beneficial.

The local Alvord Unified School District has many schools which are underfunded and unable to commit to having a dramatic arts program.

The few programs that are available are taught by teachers who are already overburdened by the school system and who are subsequently unable to devote large portions of time to their theater programs. There are also likely a good many students who would like to take part in these forms

of creative expressions but are restricted due to a lack of availability.

Objectives The primary objective of this project is to provide an art program for underfunded schools in Riverside County, California that will not only allow students to participate in arts, but also to view the arts as well. It will also help to raise money for the art program in these underfunded schools, all the while providing an avenue through which students can practice their talents.

Deliverables/Outputs To meet these objectives we pro pose the development of the following: Develop a 5 week Improv and Acting Course This 5 week Improv and Acting course will start off with 2 classes a week. The first class of each week will look at theory, wherein the students learn the technical term for the activities they will be doing, and the second class will be practice. In the first week, we will look at the basics of acting. I will be drawing on prior knowledge, teaching students the basics of acting, then, giving them small scenes for them to act out with their partners. The second week will go over Improv. The next week, we will have the students get together in groups of two or three and work together to pick a scene. The fourth week will be rehearsals for the scene and at the end of the fifth week, they will be performing it.

Put on a performance at the end of the quarter showcasing their abilities At the end of the course, as sort of a graduation, each student will have to participate in a performance. We will open this performance up to the public, so that even school children not involved in the program, will still be exposed to art. We would also sell concessions at the show, in order to make a profit that the program could use the following year for costumes

and staging purposes.

Develop Improv Games for Break and Lunch Because I want this program to be self-sustaining, even in times when the course is not occurring, I would like to teach the students a series of 10 Improv Games they could play daily during break and lunch. This would allow them to practice their skills, all the while delving into the arts, despite the absence of an art course.

Constraints/Risks The number one risk with this project will be time. A group would need to find a time in which all their schedules allow for them to go visit Lake Hills Elementary School. This time must also not affect the normal in-class times of the students. Ideally, this project would take place during their lunch time, but there could also be an issue in that many students arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t too keen to give away their break and lunch. We would need to do market this program well, to get enough people excited to join, so they would be okay with giving up their lunch hour.

Another issue will be getting the funds to start up this project. We would need to provide materials for the students, so they can have handouts with terms. Also, we might need to buy the rights for plays and short productions, which can be quite expensive. Finally, we would not be able to pay for costumes for the first show.

We could deal with this by pitching this product to different, people to see if they would be willing to donate the startup cost.

Project Planning

Beginning in January, we will undergo a curriculum with our group that will first focus on how to plot a scene. Taking our ideas, we will slowly begin to channel that into writing.

Once we review the elements of a story, we will begin piecing together a script, which we will then learn how to block appropriately and interpret scripts. By mid-March, we hope to put on a show the school and community with our finished scripts.

Roles, Responsibilities, and Funding We recognize the impossibility of procuring outside funds, so we will use minimal resources. As a group, we recognize that we will need to stick closely to our schedule in order to meet our mid-March deadline.

We will therefore have people teaching different portions of the classâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;some will be in charge of the brainstorming and creative writing process, while others will be in charge of moving that

onto an actual stage. We also will need the support of the school we work in to find us a workspace, give us time, and publicize our group and our show.

The roles we are anticipating are a liaison, a taskmaster, and a program creator. The liaison will go between the group and the school, scheduling times we can use the schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s facilities for this program, as well as scheduling times for our shows. The taskmaster, will be in charge of making sure the group is on schedule. They

will also be in charge of setting group meetings, getting funds, and carrying out any extra work that needs to be done. For example, if people are not buying tickets to our final show, this person will be in charge of promotion.

Finally, the program creator will be in charge of finding games and plays for the students to work with, and training the liaison and taskmaster in how to play these games and practice these plays with the kids.

Dress Rehearsals for the Festival of One Acts. 2015.

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Religion and Awar Religion and Sexuality Awareness Week is another collaboration, but on a much larger scale. Not only did I work with Kelly and Lindsay again in coming up with the ideas for this week, we also partnered with a lot of different organizations on campus in order to bring this idea to fruition. We spent endless hours planning a weekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worth of events designed to beat the apathy of our campus while informing them without being boring.

This is the most intensive project I have worked on in my time at La Sierra.

d Sexuality reness Week An Analysis on the Implementation of Religion & Sexuality Awareness Week Collaborative Work Spring 2017 Statement of Need: As a Christian community, La Sierra University struggles with the tone through which it must address sex.

Because the community is primarily young adults, La Sierra must grapple with hormones, peer pressure, and societal norms. The question of sexuality and faith is not one that is broached, for fear of misrepresentation or of going against religious traditions. When our project was initially conceived, it was imperative for us to recognize that the need we were addressing was one that did not receive a lot of attention. Our campus has seen a lot of public outcry regarding the mishandling of Title IX cases, but to many students, the administration has not done enough to prevent the perpetuation of this culture.

The lack of transparency with this

subject means that students on the La Sierra campus may struggle formulating a clear, fact-based view of the many aspects of sex. Controversial topics such as sexual health, premarital sex, and sexuality are not sufficiently elaborated on as to permit students to gain knowledge and create healthy paradigms, which is crucial at this age in developing healthy relationships.

A 2016 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistictes 16 indicates that approximately 21% of female students reported that they had been sexually assaulted since they began attending university.

The National Sexual Violence Resource Center 17 estimates that an approximate 60% of sexual assaults go unreported to the police. An approximate 4 out of 5 of the victims knew their attacker.

Previous attempts have been made at La Sierra University to orchestrate a change and facilitate conversation. In 2015, then-SALSU Wellness Director, Erin Wallace, created Sexual Health Awareness Week. Around the same time, campus watchdog group Unsilenced called for La Sierra University administration to be more forthcoming

and communicative about recent sexual assault on campus and the effect on students.

The attempts made on campus stimulated the campus, but through different ways. La Sierra has three major channels for involvement or information-- the church, the administration, and the student body. Previous events had come from single branches, rather than a collaboration through each group. For an event to be successful through La Sierra University, all three major players need to be involved.

The projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s initial goal was to be a continuation of Sexual Health Awareness Week. However, the more the root of the problem was analyzed, the more evident it became that the main issue at hand was the inability-- or unwillingness-- of the community to connect religion and sexuality. Through this realization, the goal for Religion and Sexuality Awareness Week (RSA Week) was born.

Stakeholders: The primary stakeholders in our project was the Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Resource Center (WRC), an adjunct service the 49

university provided whose primary purpose in previous years had been to advocate for women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community, working within the university to host events such as Take Back the Night.

Through the WRC we were able to host several events and gain the funds to put together many important pieces for our project. The WRC was fulfilling its mission by assisting us in our project. Depending on what was learned from RSA Week, they could change the way they ministered to others on our campus.

The next group of stakeholders were, of course, the students. The project was designed by students for the student body to connect with.

This meant that student involvement and interest was crucial for our mission to be considered successful.

Depending on the outcome of the RSA Week, the way the conversation about sex and religion is had on campus could see change.

The tertiary stakeholders in this endeavors were the administration. The administration had been facing several ugly scandals in the past year due to Title IX cases that left parties unsatisfied. By reaching out in a new way to address sex within the context of faith, the university could begin to mend its relationship with students.

The final stakeholders in RSA Week was the Wellness Director from SALSU. Given that RSA Week was modeled from a previous work created by SALSU, the task could eventually become adopted as a yearly project for SALSU to undertake.

Initiative: Events Involved in Religion and Sexuality Awareness Week

When it came to the creation of the events, it took awhile for us to really pinpoint what exactly we wanted to work towards and how will the events reach our goal. We spent about a few weeks meeting with the Women’s Resource Center, our main stakeholder and the organization we partnered with, in narrowing down

the theme for our project. The project demanded that we begin with five tangible goals to execute during the course of the quarter and had to represent concrete ideas which were measurable and justifiably achievable. We concurred on the following goals: • Give dorm worship talks • Implement sexual health awareness week • Create artwork around the campus celebrating diversity • Create a prayer wall • Host a clothing drive After the goals were agreed on, we worked towards the type of events that would be helpful in promoting our goal. We started off with creating the specific themes for each day which included the following: Monday-Opening Prayers, Tuesday-Religion and Premarital Sex, Wednesday-Religion and Sexual Assault, Thursday-Religion and Sexuality, Friday-Day of Silence, and Saturday-Take Back the Night. Based on those themes, we then decided events that would correspond with each theme; for example, a prayer wall could be created for Monday’s event or a speaker would be needed on Tuesday to speak about premarital sex. We also went through several changes over the course of the weeks as we faced challenges such as chapel dates and conflicts with incorporating Denim Day into our awareness week; in reality, it took us several attempts to finalize the events that we believed would work for the corresponding themes. In order for the events to be approved, we met weekly and spoke with Office of Student Involvement Director, Tara Becker, who was very helpful in guiding us with the implementation of the events and also in its promotion. One goal we discarded from our project was the clothing drive because we began the project a little later than we intended to which meant limited time to host a clothing drive and we believed it didn’t fit well with our theme.

When it came to the delegation of responsibilities, we worked with our stakeholders’ director, Sasha Ross, and Tara Becker who delegated tasks

to each member of the group. We used Asana, a web and mobile application, which notified each member of their tasks along with the assignment’s due date and also an area where they could check off their completed tasks. This was very crucial for us as we were able to organize ourselves and distribute the many responsibilities, that were involved in the project, amongst ourselves. Of course, our weekly meetings were also very central in forming our project as well as making sure that we were all subscribing to the same idea.

Because our goal was to initiate a conversation about sexuality and our faith, we decided to name our project Religion and Sexuality Awareness Week rather than Sexual Health Awareness Week. The whole week consisted of workshops and activities to help students think about contemporary issues regarding sex within our religious institution. Topics like premarital sex, hookup culture, sexual assault, and sexual identity were all part of the discussion as we pushed for a deeper understanding of ourselves, our spirituality, and our society. We initiated the week by having the Prayer Wall, a series of artistic panels constructed of wood and chicken wire, installed on the Campus Mall. Students and staff wrote messages of support (anonymously or signed) to friends, classmates and colleagues who were reconciling traumatic relationships and/or other aspects of their sexuality with their faith. The Prayer Wall was available for people to write their requests all week from 9AM-5PM, except during chapel. At the end of the week, the requests were prayed over during La Sierra University Church’s Friday night First Service.

For Tuesday, we planned two events which focused on premarital sex. We originally wanted a chapel date where we could choose our speakers to speak on this topic, specifically holding a panel where speakers addressed the Bible’s views on premarital sex and what to do when you are having it. Unfortunately, because we began our project until Winter quarter, Spiritual Life already had a set of speakers to speak for spe-

cific chapel dates, especially for our date. However, they did provide us with an orator, Pastor Iki Taimi from Garden Grove SDA Church, they believed would be perfect in delivering the topic about relationships, virginity, and the way the Bible perceives sex. That same day in the evening, we developed another interactive event called Religion and Hookup Culture, a campus discussion led by SALSU’s Wellness Director, Ariela Castro, on dating relationships hookup culture in the context of spirituality, and the power of “me-too”.

Wednesday’s topic consisted of Religion and Sexual Assault, which was held in Matheson Chapel. The program’s objective was to make students realize the importance they have in being a part of the solution in the prevention of sexual assault and how they can help transform traumatic experiences into healing. The evening was filled with performances on slam poetry, music and on-site art production. To conclude the evening, Dr. Laurel Brown, from the Office of Title IX, also spoke on the topic of sexual assault followed by a Q&A. Sexual and Religious Identity was Thursday’s theme; the event involved the testimony of La Sierra alumni, Daniel Perez, who spoke about his experience in integrating his sexual orientation with his Adventist values as well as Christianity, the Bible, and the LGBTQIA+ community in the context of Christ-like love. Members of Prism were also present to discuss their experience and to take questions.

Following Thursday’s event was Friday’s event of Day of Silence. Before the start of this particular event, we handed out buttons, stickers, and other informational materials for those that wanted to participate in remaining silent in solidarity with victims of sexual assault and bullying within the LGBTQIA+ community starting Friday sun up to sundown. Those that were interested in participating and letting others know why he or she were staying silent in solidarity with victim/ survivors, came by the Prayer Wall table on the Campus Mall to pick up their buttons. That same evening, we

had First Service and Closing Prayers where the Prayer Wall was brought into the church and served as a backdrop for the service. The organizers of the Religion and Sexuality Awareness Week spoke briefly on the aim and goals of this campus emphasis week and Donovan Childs, one of La Sierra’s former chaplains, prayed over the wall and for those who were exploring the intersection of their faith and sexuality, grappling with sexual assault, or feeling that they didn’t belong and/or were not enough just as the beautiful Creation God made them to be. Delroy Brooks, Pastor of Fontana SDA Church, gave a concluding message on sexuality and the Bible.

To conclude the week, we ended Saturday with Take Back the Night, a special event that featured a powerful night of music, stories, solidarity and service-learning opportunities as well as a rally, march, and candlelight vigil to end all forms of sexual assault and violence. Local service providers were invited to the event to provide information on how to prevent sexual assault, how others have worked toward healing and triumphed over trauma, and to light a candle in honor of a victim/ survivor that we knew. The event was free and open to the public and free refreshments were provided during the event.

Process Evaluation As stated before, the goal of this event was to get information out to the campus in order to increase the awareness of the lack of information the Seventh Day Adventist community provides when we begin to talk about the issues of sex and sexuality. Really, what this program was designed to create was campus wide awareness of issues.

Specifically, we spoke about Premarital sex, Sexual Assault, and sexuality.

We spoke about premarital sex because the church’s stance on premarital sex is that it should not be done, however, people are having sex anyway.

We wanted an honest conversation wherein individuals could honestly speak about their experiences in sex without feeling like the church would

condemn them. Where individuals who engaged in premarital sex would feel free to have conversations with those choosing to abstain without fear of being ridiculed.

Sexual Assault has been a big topic in our community since the issues with Title IX occurred a few years ago. We could not talk about sex on the La Sierra University campus without also addressing issues of sexual assault. The hard part about sexual assault is that sometimes the line that causes an action to cross over into assault is not clear to many of the students. Also, it might not be immediately apparent to students what it is like going through sexual assault. Some individuals on the campus had experienced assault before and didn’t even realize it. This session was to provide information and to help students understand what it was like to be a victim.

Finally, we also had to talk about sexuality, as in, sexual orientation.

The church’s stance has always been that it is not okay to be anything other than straight. However, there are other people in our community that are not just cis straight individuals, so we wanted to cater to them. We not only wanted to give them a voice wherein they could talk about what it was like being in a Seventh Day Adventist community, a community that did not always accept them for what they were, we also wanted to get those who may think that belonging to the LGBTQ+ community was acceptable, a venue in which they could see that these individuals are real human beings with feelings. We wanted to draw on their empathy so that they could continue to practice it on the campus and in the community.

To create activities that accomplished all of our goals took a lot of meetings with a lot of different entities on this campus. Our first and number one supporters were the individuals in the Women’s Resource Center. We came to them with the idea and also suggested that we take 51

over their Take Back the Night Event, absorbing it into our week of events.

We wanted to do this so that we could increase their turn out. Also, this could be a way to get information out to the campus in regards to sexual assault. We began by having weekly two hour long meetings with Sasha Ross, the head of the Women’s Resource Center. She pointed us in the right direction as we worked our project together in such a way that we hoped the administration would approve of. She really helped us understand why this project was needed and how to then express this to the superiors of the school.

Later, we included Tara Becker from the Office of Student Involvement into our weekly meetings about the project. She was very helpful in that she helped us solidify and plan out the events even further. She helped us to do this in such a way that the campus would be receptive to. Not only so the students would want to attend the events, but also so that the administration would approve of how the events would be put on. She also put us in contact with the Spiritual Life and Student Life departments so that they could take another look at the programs we had prepared. Tara was also instrumental in that she her position on the campus allowed her to realize when our project was conflicting with other events on our campus. For example, the week we had planned originally for our events ended up being the same week the Spiritual Life Department was also doing a week of events. Tara, upon noticing this, talked to Spiritual Life on behalf of us. Because of her, they gave us the option to change the date of our events to later in the quarter.

This was a great switch for us because Spiritual Life was then willing to give us chapel time wherein we could speak about the issues for this week.

After that, we began working closely with Spiritual Life. We worked with them in creating the

program for that Chapel. It was at that Chapel that we spoke of premarital sex. This was great exposure for us as well because it allowed for most of the school to hear about the events we were having that week. We also worked with Spiritual Life on an event the Friday of that week. Spiritual Life has their weekly Friday vespers called First Service and they dedicated part of their service to talking about sex and sexuality as well. This was great for exposure as well because although it was at the end of the week, our biggest event, Take Back the Night, was the Saturday following the event.

Along with Spiritual Life, we also worked with Student Life very closely.

It would have been easy to put on this week of event without involving Student Life and the rest of the administration. We chose to involve them, however, because we did not want to shock them or make it difficult for others to continue on this project in the future.

We wanted this project to be continuous after all. Mostly, the administration helped us with the program for the night we talked about Sexual Assault as well as the night we talked about Sexuality. We had several meetings with Dean Robinson as to what we could or could not include in our programs. She was very understanding and allowed us to do all that she could that did not go against the rules of the university.

We worked with a graphic designer outside of the university. He was able to design the posters for this week for a fraction of the cost. We relayed to him what we were looking for in our posters, and he created them to fit into vision for that week. Not only that, but he created a logo for out week as well as for Take Back the Night so the Women’s Resource Center can continue to use his work. We not only worked with this designer, but also with several on campus social media influencers to put his work up on their instagram as a way to get news out to students on campus that this week of events was happening.

We choose around 10 key influencers who were all very willing to work with us.

The university’s art department was also very helpful in putting together this project. Specifically, we wanted to create a prayer wall so that throughout the week students could add prayers if they or someone they knew were having a hard time dealing with any of the issues we were talking about. It took about three weeks in which Professor Musso so generously allowed us to use his woodshop and taught us how to use the products in their in order to build these walls. At the end of this project, Musso donated these prayer walls to the Women’s Resource Center for use the next time they wanted to invite prayers regarding the issues of sex and sexuality.

Finally, we worked with the Social Work Department to get volunteers to help set up events and to mann the Prayer Wall booth. These volunteered needed to finish community service hours for their class, and their professor allowed our event to count to finish their hours. This got us about thirty or so volunteers, which was very helpful because it alleviated the work we had to do so the three of us weren’t doing all the work ourselves.

Outcome Evaluation We measured our success by the amount of individuals showing up at our events as well as their evaluations of the events themselves. Each weekday event brought in about 20 individuals (except for Friday’s First Service and Tuesday’s Chapel because those drew in crowds that were not just there to participate in RSA events). Our weekend event, Take Back the Night, drew the biggest crowd with about 50 people.

After each event, we focused on the qualitative reviews that individuals would give us. At the end of Monday night, one of the ladies that attended our talk premarital sex said that she wished La Sierra had more talks like these for her and her friends because she felt that some of her friends were not knowledgeable as to what it meant to have sex outside of marriage. She explained that because her friends were only taught not to have sex, and was never taught the safe ways of doing so,

they would participate in risky sexual behaviors they later came to regret what they had done. We also had a quiz game at the event where people could electronically answer questions and we found that a majority of the people in the audience had engaged in some kind of premarital act which showed us that our event really did reach people who needed it.

We also got good reviews for our event on Sexual Assault. Poetry was a good way to connect with the audience empathetically, and a lot of the individuals who came to this event relayed that to us. After, we had a question and answer session with Title IX, which allowed individuals to text in any questions they may have for the coordinator. I would judge this to be very effective as well because many people ended up asking questions about basic Title IX processes they did not understand. We felt that we were able to educate at least part of the room for that event.

Not only were we able to educate the room, we were able to push Title IX to get more involved as well. After the event, they expressed that they wanted to have more events like these for the campus.

Thursday night, one particular story stood out to us that made us count the night a success. There was one boy who was a volunteer from a class taught by a social work teacher. He was adamant that we frame our talk on Religion and Sexual Orientation along the lines that religion says that being anything other than straight is wrong. This volunteer came to our talk, and the next day, he spoke to us about how the talk had moved him to change his mind. He said that he still believed that being anything other than straight was a sin, but that from the talk he understood that everybody was a sinner, and that LGBTQ+ individuals were just trying to live with their sin like he was with his. While this wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a complete change of heart, and also not the message we were trying to teach, it was great that we were able 53

to at least get him to think in more tolerable ways to his community.

Finally, the Women’s Resource Center counted Take Back the Night to be a success because we were able to get more people to show up than they had in previous years. Unfortunately, some things did not go as planned, but all in all it was a very successful night. We received positive feedback regarding the live music, the speakers uplifting victims, the march to end sexual violence, and the prayer vigil afterwards.

All in all, when we started this project, we knew we wouldn’t be able to get radical change on this campus.

All we really wanted was for a few individuals to show up to our events.

We counted these events a success if we were able to make a few individuals see the world differently, and thus interact with their community differently. Our goal was to breed tolerance in our listeners and to give people a place to have real conversations about pressing issues. People were able to do that at every one of our nightly events, and for that, we would count Religion and Sexuality week a success.

Conclusion Although we faced obstacles along the way in creating this project, we did receive many positive comments from both students and faculty alike based on the fact that we had started an important conversation on a topic that has often been ignored, neglected, and tabooed as a result of its sensitivity.

We received much support from faculty and administrators on our project and if it hadn’t been for them, this project wouldn’t have existed and continued forward. Based on the number of people who came to the events and the positive comments, it shows us that our campus is receptive, to some extent, to this topic and it also demonstrates that people are willing to listen and converse about this topic. We mention the phrase “to some extent” because we have encountered people who were a bit hesitant on the topic of the project due to its sensitive nature and there are students who come from a conservative SDA background who struggle with the concept of accepting the LGBTQIA+ community as a result of limited exposure to this topic.

Thus, we believe this project should be an ongoing project that should continue each year so that we can inform the

coming generation of students about the importance of talking about sexuality and how our faith fits into this paradigm. If this doesn’t continue, then we’ll have a generation of students who profess to be Christian but yet don’t accept those that are different from them even though those people are also human.

An important action that clearly needs to be identified is when it comes to creating and implementing events on campus, it’s best to begin with such plans with the Office of Student Involvement. We realized this halfway during the process of our project as we recognized that some events conflicted with other school events that were already placed in the school’s yearly schedule.

Tara would have been able to inform us, from the very beginning, what departments we needed to contact and which administrators we needed to speak to.

Before we had spoken with Tara, we were very confused as to who we were to speak to look over our programs, which departments would be able to provide us with a specific question, and many others. It would’ve saved us energy and time if we had spoken with Tara from the very beginning when we initiated the project. Overall, we are

Caption Caption

really grateful for having been part of the project and in its creation because we believe that sexuality is an important topic that should be addressed since its often ignored, as mentioned before, and not given enough importance when it should since many young adults, within Adventism, are having difficulty reconciling their sexuality with their beliefs.

Reflection of Javia Headley For this project I spent a lot of time meeting with different entities of school to make sure we could make the project we envisioned a success.

From meeting with the Deans in order to working with Musso on building the prayer wall to training the volunteers, I really worked hard to make sure the project went off without a hitch. It was very stressful at times, especially because we were all very busy and sometimes it was hard to get the work evenly spread out between the three of us, but I really think that our combined efforts in the end made it worth it. We all tried to make it to all our team meetings, we used Asana so everyone was aware of what they needed to do for the team and when, and we tried to keep in communica-

tion, both with our little group and all those helping us out, as much as possible.

The first and most important thing that I learned from this project is to stand up for what I believe people need to hear. We got some push back from the administration on the events we had chosen to talk about these topics, and there was some initial pushback, and while we compromised where we saw fit, we fought in other areas, and this really led to very fruitful events. I also learned that working with a lot of entities is hard, so delegation is key. Everything needs to be delegated in a project such as this, from the shopping that needs to get done, to who will write the emails to stakeholders.

If someone is planning on doing an event like this in the future, I would first and foremost suggest having a solid team. Then, make sure you have a solid plan. A lot of our plans kept changing as we realized that some were just not realistic or were not planned far enough in advance.

For example, we wanted to use dorm worships to have our talks but these were planned so far in advance it was

almost impossible for us to get a spot at these worships. We did not let small roadblocks like this stop us, however, because we learned to adapt, to change plans to better suit everybody involved. I think our adaptability really made these events a success.

All in all, however, the most pertinent advice I would give anyone planning this event in the future is to plan these things a year in advance, to stay firm in beliefs they might have about what the universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s students need to hear, but also to be flexible with whatever obstacles come their way. Also, their needs to be an entire entity of the program dedicated to marketing, which is a feat in itself because of the general apathy of the universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s campus. If the next individuals doing a project such as this follows this pattern, they should make an even better program.

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Taken on an Honors field trip to Los Angeles. 2017.

This is a proposal for my Honors Scholarship Project. This project will be attached as an appendix to this document. Despite being a psychology major, I wanted to do a project in the field I wanted to pursue a job in.

The idea behind this project is that it would help me get a job in the future.

I thought that if I could bring to my job interviews information on how to market to my generation, perhaps it would increase my likelihood of getting a job working with this group of people.

Scholarship Proposal

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Consumerism in Millennials Research Proposal Winter 2017 According to Pew Research Center, the Millennial generation includes those born after 1980s and the first generation to come of age in the new millennium. Specifically, these are young people ages 20 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 37 in 2017. This generation has surpassed the Baby Boomers as Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Largest generation. As of April 25, 2016, the United States Census Bureau estimated that millennials numbered about 75 million people in the United States. In light of this fact, it is no surprise that the millennial buying power is an estimated $200 Billion annually, and these numbers are continuing to grow as young immigrants join the expanding ranks. Millennials are not just impressive because of the sheer number of them, they are also impressive because of their uniqueness and the influence they have on American Society. Millennials are the most diverse group of youth in this nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history. They are also the generation born and bred on behaviors like texting and tweeting, and using websites like Facebook, YouTube, Google and Wikipedia. According to Marketing to Millennials, this generation has been at the forefront of every new, big idea that has come to light in the past few years.

Given the impact the millennials have on Western Society, it is no surprise that companies are now paying millions of dollars for information on how they work and how to most effectively get millennials to buy their products and engage with their companies. Several different research projects have been done that look into how to most effectively market to this generation. They have realized that this generation wants to be active participants and partners to the brands they love. They expect companies to listen to work with them and to listen to their opinions (marketing to millennials). They have also found that this generation is more likely to respond to coupons in online ads, are

drawn to websites with good design, and are more likely to write online reviews if it benefits them ( Longitudinal study). Digital marketing strategies found that graphics are highly effective in getting the attention of millennials, and if a company would like millennials to buy their products, they need competitive prices and good shipping rates. All of these studies focus mainly on inbound marketing, or how they can use the internet to increase sales, once a consumer comes looking for products like theirs.

One area that is lacking in this research is how to best utilize social media to market to this generation.

Social media marketing is a relatively new concept that many companies do not quite have a grasp on. This is mediated by the fact that there are many different social media platforms, and each has a different purpose. With this in mind, it is easy to see why a company cannot just create one image or one tagline and expect for it to work on all social media sites, I would like to create a study, specifically targeted towards millennials that takes a look at how different ads on different social media sites elicit different responses. This data will be compiled into an easy to understand manual for companies to use when making decisions on which social media sites to use to run which ad campaign.

For this study, I plan to utilize an online survey tool which will require a certain level of introspection on the part of the millennials, to think back on what kind of social media marketing is the most effective to them.

I will be using the library to find different tools for my survey and to find literature that has covered these issues previously. I will be using SPSS to analyze my data, then I will be using different tools such as Illustrator and Indesign, to put my findings into a graphic form.

A few friends from Sonoma and I. 2017

Black Lives M

This is work that I did for my Political Psychology class. At this point in my college career, I was beginning to understand the world better, forming my own ideas about political movements. One such movement is the Black Lives Matter movement.

This paper analyzes the emergence of the black lives matter movement and uses psychology ides to explain why this movement was mobilized so quickly and on such a global manner.

Matter

Black & Proud top from Adorned by Chi, an Instagram stire. 2017.

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The Initiation of the Social Movement: #BlackLivesMatter Argumentation Fall 2016

Abstract #BlackLivesMatter was a movement birthed on twitter. It emerged in 2013 after the death of Treyvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman. It escalated in the year that followed when two unarmed black men, Eric Garner and Michael Brown, were both killed by police officers, and both police officers were released of all charges of manslaughter. Historically, mass media has not been effective in activating a social movement, but #BlackLivesMatter has grown into one of the most prominent social movements of today. The rise of #BlackLivesMatter can be seen through the four aspects of mobilization as explained by Klandermans and Oegema. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rise can also be explained by the Social Identity Theory and the Classic Collective Behavior Theory

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In a study by van Stekelenburg and colleagues, it was found that civic participation affects political action because those who participate in events such as protests and walk outs have a type of civic mindedness and willingness to focus on political activities16. Many social movements are birthed with the intent to stimulate political action in its followers.

Minorities are often the instigators of social movements. Klandermans attributes this to the fact that discrimination, marginalization, and

Garner and Michael Brown19. The phrase was used in many protests that followed the acquittal of the policemen responsible for the death of these three men. #BlackLivesMatter has several ideologies it tries to impose upon America. According to it’s website, #BlackLivesMatter was created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted for his crime, and dead 17year old Trayvon was posthumously placed on trial for his own murder.

Rooted in the experiences of Black

Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state.

We are talking about the ways in which Black lives are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity. #BlackLivesMatter is working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. We affirm our contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression. We have put our sweat equity and love for Black people into creating a political proj-

alienation are some of the oldest themes in the realm of political psychology17. And, while it is easy for political psychologist to focus on the question of who engages in political violence, a corresponding question is what psychological effects do these acts of violence have on the victims. One effect that is easy to see is the coalition of the oppressed people which often leads to the formation of social movements. One such movement recently emerged from the perceived unjust treatment of Blacks by the Police.

In America, as of 2001, one in six black men were incarcerated by the police, and, as of 2013, black men were six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men18. These statistics were brought to life when a series of fatal shootings that occurred to unarmed black men in 2013 and 2014 were broadcasted on social media. #BlackLivesMatter, the movement birthed on twitter, followed the death of these three men very closely. The movement emerged after the 2013 Treyvon Martin Case, and escalated after the deaths of Eric

people in this country who actively resist our dehumanization, #BlackLivesMatter is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society.

Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes. It goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all. Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been marginalized within Black liberation movements. It is a tactic to (re)build the Black liberation movement. When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which

ect–taking the hashtag off of social media and into the streets. The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for ALL Black lives striving for liberation20.

At its most basic form, #BlackLivesMatter is an online forum through which Black People and their allies can talk about their oppression and formulate plans for social action; it has mostly been about sparking the initial conversation that could eventually turn into widespread change. #BlackLivesMatter is around to ask the rousing question, does America fully acknowledge the injustices that plague the back community? The movement has a unique way of asking these questions, because it largely uses social media to promote its demands. Although the media has not been very effective in gathering people and initiating movements in the past, it has been the most effective tool for the #BlackLivesMatter movement so far21. With a movement like this that is gaining so much traction, there are several questions political psychologists could ask. First, what causes a

BlackLiv #

group of people to ban together and start a movement such as this? Also, how did #BlackLivesMatter manage to succeed, despite the fact that, historically, movements birthed and grown on mass media has not been able to activate their followers to such an impressive manor. It is hypothesized that the banning together of the African American community can be explained through Social Identity Theory and Classic Collective Behavior Theory. Secondly, the success of #BlackLivesMatter on so-

that when there is a deviation from the normal way of life, people will do what they can to ensure that this deviation stops occurring. Finally, the phrase mobilization potentials was coined by Klandermans & Oegema22. It describes the members of a community that have the ability to come together to participate in the movement.

History of #BlackLivesMatter.

As state before, the movement emerged after the 2013 Treyvon

Police Department issued a statement saying that Zimmerman would not be charged because there was no ground to disprove his story of the events. Then, the department’s Homicide Detective, Christopher Serino came forward and recommended that Zimmerman be charged with manslaughter because his injuries weren’t consistent with a life-threatening episode by Martin. A few days later, the FBI begin looking into Zimmerman’s case. Protests began with a petition signed by 1.3 Million people

cial media can be seen through Klandermans and Oegema’s four aspects of mobilization.

Martin Case, and escalated after the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown23. Treyvon Martin was a 17year old African American student who was visiting his father in Sanford, Florida, in February of 2012, after receiving a 10-day suspension from school. On February 26, George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain was on duty for the Twin Lakes gated community in Sanford. Zimmerman saw Martin in the neighborhood, and called 911 to report a suspicious person. The operator instructed him not to approach Martin, but Zimmerman disregarded the instructions. A few minutes later, neighbors reported hearing gunshots. Zimmerman attested to the fact that he shot Martin, however, he claimed it was self-defense.

In the police report filed by Officer Timothy Smith, Zimmerman was reported to be bleeding from the nose and the back of the head. It was also later noted, after medical examinations, that he had an open wound of the scalp, and a closed fracture on the nasal bone24.

Just one month later, the Sanford

for the arrest of Zimmerman, and with rallies all over the country, exactly one month after Martin’s death.

In April of 2012, Zimmerman is charged with second degree murder and apologizes to the Martin family for the death of their son. Days later, Zimmerman is released on bail, and he enters a plea of not guilty to the court. A month later, Zimmerman files for a new Judge. This judge, along with a jury of 5 white women and a woman of color, try his case.

On July 13, 2013, the jury finds Zimmerman not guilty18. On July 13, 2013, #BlackLivesMatter was born. #BlackLivesMatter was born as a twitter movement. In its early days, members of the movement protested the acquittal of Zimmerman, however, for more than a year after it was first coined, it was rarely ever used.

The movement began really gaining traction in 2014 and 2015 after the death of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, both unarmed black men believed by the movement to have been killed unjustly.

The second case that was crucial in the creation of #BlackLivesMatter,

vesMatter Method Methods and Procedure

In this study, the history of #BlackLivesMatter will be examined, starting with the death of Martin, Garner, and Brown. This paper will examine how the African American community responded to these deaths, and, most importantly, how their reactions were manifested on twitter. Data from twitter, as presented in a report from the Center for Media and Social Impact will also be examined.

The terms that will be discussed are Social Identity Theory, Classic Collective Behavior Theory and Mobilization Potentials. Social Identity Theory explains how people view themselves as being part of certain identities, or in groups. Thee more a person identifies with those within the in group, the more they will see the differences between themselves and the outgroup. Classic Collective Behavior Theory stems from the idea

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is the Eric Garner case. As reported by the New York Times, Eric Garner was a 43 year old black man living in Staten Island. He was a few blocks from the Island Ferry terminal on July 17, 2014 selling loose cigarettes. The police try to arrest him for this, however Garner resists arrest nonviolently. Officer Daniel Pantaleo puts Garner in a chokehold, a move that is forbidden by the police force. Garner chocked out “I can’t breathe” as Pantaleo holds him down. Garner dies in the arms of Pantaleo, and the entire altercation is caught on film. A few weeks after his death, a city medical examiner rules Garner’s death as a homicide. It was then decided that a grand jury would be convened to hear charges against Pantaleo and the other officers involved in Garner’s case. The decision does not come until four months later when the grand jury declines to charge Pantaleo with the death of Garner25.

Just one month after Garner was killed, Michael Brown was shot by officer Darren Wilson at around noon on August 9, 2014.

According to a report released by the Department of Justice, Wilson heard a transmission over the dispatch radio alerting him to a theft in progress.

Over the radio, he was also given a description of the suspects. He was driving in the area near where the crime had taken place, when he saw Brown and a friend walking down the mid-

dle of the street. Wilson’s statement claimed that he immediately suspected them of the theft because of the descriptions he had heard on the radio and because of the stolen item in Brown’s hand. When Wilson tried to pull over and step out of his SUV, witnesses claim that Brown reached into the SUV and punched him and grabbed him. This could be validated by the injuries on Wilson’s jaw and neck. Wilson told prosecutors that he responded to Brown’s attack by drawing his gun, because he could not access less deadly weaponry. Wilson states that he shot Brown in the hand, which can be seen in the autopsy. He then says that Brown tried to gain control of the gun but there are no eyewitnesses that agree with this story. After the initial shooting, Brown ran at least 180 feet away from the SUV. He then turned and came back towards Wilson, which is when Wilson shot and killed him. Some witnesses stated that Brown had his hands up in surrender, however it was not enough to support the prosecution of Wilson26.

Wilson was not arrested for the murder of Michael Brown.

These incidents, especially the one involving Garner, seeing as the video of his death was posted on social media, set the tone for #BlackLivesMatter in the early days. Many people joined the movement because they believed Zinmerman, Pantaleo, and Wilson did not deserve to be acquitted. They protested these judicial decisions in a variety of ways. Their first major platform for protest was Ferguson. In the days leading up to and following the trial of Darren Wilson, many people took to the streets protesting the treatment of African Americans by the police. Many of them choose to use the hashtag movement

looked at here as a unifying cry to rally under. Since then, the website for #BlackLivesMatter has cited hundreds more protests created by different chapters in the organization27.

They engage in sermons, marches, movie screenings, parades, and violent and peaceful protests. Over the summer of 2015, activist from the movement even began disrupting presidential candidates at rallies and events. The movement has become intertwined with mainstream media and politics giving them platforms that reach out to people willing to listen to their demands. Although protests on college campuses are nothing new, it is important to note that students are also willing to take to the streets, participating in high profile protests all over the country.

The most important tool that the movement has utilized however, is social media. Every time an African American encounters the police, members of the movement insure that they are able to capture the footage on camera, as was done with Eric Garner. Their social media presence is so huge that the Department of Homeland Security monitors their movements on these websites very closely28.

Twitter Facts. After the death of these three men, during the period of June 2014 to May 2015, three major hashtags emerged on Twitter. The first was #Ferguson with 21.6 million tweet, then #MichealBrown with 9.3 million tweets, and finally, #BlackLivesMatter with 4.3 million tweets (McLaughlin, 2016). The hashstag only started getting popular as Ferguson protestors began using it as their slogan. According to Freelon, McIlwain, & Clark, #Ferguson and #MichealBrown are obsolete now because they were not as flexible as #BlackLivesMatter, and they could not be applied to a variety of situations19. Along with being a social movement birthed on a social network, #BlackLivesMatter is unique in that it demands specific amendments to a political issue, it aims to

Image from Black Liv

improve the lives of a racial minority that has been highly discriminated against, and it engages with the public through politicians, the press, and most importantly social media23.

Results The first hypothesis looked at in this paper is that the banning together of the African American community to protest under #BlackLivesMatter can be explained through Social Identity Theory and Classic Collective Behavior Theory. According to De Weerd & Klandermans, Social Identity Theory can be used to understand how a person’s identification within a group could lead to their participation in political protest29. Just the mere categorization into a social groups causes high levels of identification for those in the group and negative bias for those without30 31 32. This awareness of belonging to a groups brings with it a certain value that may cause a person to form an emotional attachment to their groups29. In the case of #BlackLivesMatter, the protestors may feel they are a part of the in group, which, in this case are the African Americans and their allies. The outgroup are those perceived to be working against the African American community. There is evidence that group identification can mediate the relationship between discontent and participation. The more attached a person feels to a group, the more likely they are to go out and join a protest29. Cross-cultural conflicts can cause a person’s group identity to feel threatened. The stronger, and more developed a person’s group identity is, the more likely they are to perceive threat, and, further, the more likely they will be to want to participate in a movement made to eliminate that threat33. The constant display of the persecution of African Americans on social media may push African Americans to protest with #BlackLivesMatter.

The other psycho-sociological theory that could explain collective

action towards change, is classic collective behavior theory. Classic behavior theory is built on the assumption that all groups have the opportunity to influence the normal, institutionalized way of life, and that social movements arise when people see a disruption in the system34. African Americans saw the treatment of African American men by the police as a disruption in the system, and therefore, the #BlackLivesMatter movement arose. The participation in this movement, according to classic collective behavior theory, is motivated by the need for change³4.

The next theory looked at is the success of #BlackLivesMatter on social media seen through Klandermans and Oegema’s four aspects of mobilization. From the beginning of the movement, these four aspects have been abundantly clear. Their first aspect of mobilization is the formation of mobilization potentials.

Mobilization potentials are the people in a society who can be activated to join the movement. The formation of mobilization potential occurs when a social movement wins attitudinal support. For the #BlackLivesMatter movement, it could be argued that they gained attitudinal support around the time of Brown and Garner’s death. Garners death was very instrumental in this because his death was not only videotaped, it was also blasted all over social media. Because of this, people were a b l e to witness police brutality first hand. This appealed to the basic human emotion of empathy, which, then, allowed for people to identify with the cause. After the creation of mobilization potential comes the formation and activation of recruitment networks.

If a movement does not have access to recruitment networks, it’s mobilization potential cannot be realized (see above). These networks were formed mostly on Twitter.

People constantly tweeting the hashtag allowed the movement to become a household name. The creation of the movement’s website was also instrumental in this because it became a forum where people in the same community could come together with likeminded individual and converse and rally under the name of the movement. Mass media, direct mail, and friendships are a couple ways in which a person can be targeted by mobilization attempts.

For #BlackLivesMatter, the media and friendships were the most important in their mobilization.

Friendships, as stated above, was especially cultivated through their forums on their website.

The third step of the mobilization attempt is the arousal of motivation to participate. The more people are motivated, the more likely they are to participates in events such as protests and rallies. The arousal of motivation to participate also occurred on social media. The constant use of the hashtag reminded people that each shooting was not an isolated incident, and that something needed to be done. Klandermans & Oegema describe the mot ivat i o n to partic-

ipate as a result of the p e rc eive d costs and benefit22.

The community to which the movement speaks to, in this case, the African American community, has to feel

ves Matter Movement.

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as if the gain of the collective, in the long run, will be worth the involvement in the movement. #BlackLivesMatter does a good job of having detailed descriptions of the results they want, so their followers know what they are working towards, and are therefore, motivated to go after it. The final aspect of mobilization is the removal of barriers to participate.

The more people are motivated, the less they are impeded by barriers. The way #BlackLivesMatter removes barriers is by constantly keeping people motivated, by constantly keeping their hashtag, their videos, and their protest streaming over social media.

Through this analysis, it can be seen that despite the fact that #BlackLivesMatter used social media as their platform for social reform, they were still able to take the steps necessary to become an important social movement today.

Discussion There are several questions re-

garding the rise and success of the movement #BlackLivesMatter, because it was not believed that this movement could have advanced as far as it did. What started out as a small protest against the way black men were treated by the police, evolved into a widespread, national organization with chapters all over the country. #BlackLivesMatter is now a household name. This movement, born to support Garner, Brown, and Martin, and owes a considerable amount of its success to social media. Twitter especially has been instrumental in the collecting of followers. This movement was able to gain traction, and support because of strong social identities and collective mindset that drove people to protest. Further, after the movement gained footing, you can clearly see it following the correct series of pre-determined steps, a movement such as this one ought to take.

These observations regarding this movement are very important because, it can be a foothold on which to stand when thinking about fur-

ther investigation. #BlackLivesMatter may one day become an iconic portion of history, so it is important that we document and look into it now, before the peak of the movement has passed. It is also important that we look at #BlackLivesMatter in relations to other movements. By doing this we can see, that, the old way of gaining members of an organization such as mail and friendship, is just as effective as the mass media.

We can also use this movement as a ruler by which to measure the other movements that will eventually be birthed on social media as well.

While this is a preliminary research, and there are no conclusive findings in this paper, this can be useful for researchers to know these facts in the future. It is also important for our citizens to understand these facts, so they can see how they can utilize the resources around them, in order to mobilize people into actors for change.

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These are images I have done for my Photoshop and Illustrator class. This piece shows an image of Jamaica superimposed over an image of myself. The idea behind this piece is that who I am is largely defined by where I was born. Jamaica will always be part of me, so much so that I expect people to be able to see Jamaica when they look at me, much like one can in this image.

This piece shows an image of Italy superimposed over an image of myself.

Whereas the other photo showed where I was born as being instrumental in my life, this image shows how a place that I choose to visit had a great influence on me. As shown earlier in this magazine, I visited Italy after my freshman year. This was instrumental because it showed me how big the world is and helped me increase my worldview.

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The photo pictured above features an image of two purple planets that I designed on Microsoft office. This isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t as creative as the photos on the left, but I added it to this document because I spent a lot of time working on it. I also included it because space has always been of interest for me, and that is why I choose to create a work like this in the first place.

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they say that a big part of growing up is growing out of crying at the feeling of something missing but here I am at 21 still unsure of what I want or how to ask for it.

h t i a F y M t n e m p o l e v e D This paper was written for my capstone class in psychology as an analysis of the development of my faith from childhood to now. Much of the concepts of this paper will also be explored in my world view paper, especially in the sections on knowing God. It has been only a few months since I took this class and wrote this paper, yet, as I reread these paragraphs, I begin to realize that I have changed since I wrote this paper, and that I continue to change still. These changes will become apparent as you read my next piece, the final version of my world view paper.

My dedication. 1997.

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Developmental Analysis Paper Reflective Work Winter 2017

My baptism. 2005.

Part 1 My own faith development has been a rocky one. With such a unique childhood, it has been interesting reliving my past in order to take a look at my faith development. The two models I will be using to describe my personal growth and the development of my faith are Fowler’s Model of Faith Development and Piaget’s Model of Psychological Development.

Although Fowler’s Model is not necessarily about religious faith, but rather, a person’s way of seeing themselves in relation to others, I will be using it to describe my religious growth.

The first stage in Fowler’s Model is the Primal/Undifferentiated Faith stage. This is birth to about two years.

Obviously, I do not remember much about myself during this time, but I have heard stories. Fowler describes this stage as the stage where children experience faith as a connection to their caregivers. I can definitely say that this was true for me in the first few years of my life. I was born in the church. Both of my parents are very strict Seventh Day Adventists. Before I could even speak in complete sentences, my parents had me kneeling in between them at night, saying small prayers like, “Dear God, thank you for this food. Amen.” Religion was all I knew, because from birth, my parents made sure it was part of my life. This lines with the Sensorimotor Stage of the Piaget Developmental Model. In this stage, I, the infant, started to understand the world around me through interactions with the environment. I used accommodation and assimilation as ways to learn about the natural world in this stage.

What this means is that I was able to organize different things into different schemas, and, more importantly, I was able to recognize when an object did not fit a certain schema and modify it. What this means in relation to my faith is that, at a young age, one of the first schemas I was able to create was that which was religious and that which was not. My parents have drilled these ideas in my head from birth until now. From a young age I was able to recognize when to pray,

when to stop watching TV on a Friday afternoon, when I could start watching TV again after the Sabbath was over, how to behave in the sanctuary and much more.

Following my Primal faith stage, was the stage of intuitive-projective faith. In this stage, I am still at the age that I cannot think in abstract terms.

My faith is still impressions left on me by my elders. This would be the stage in which I became involved in religious rituals, learning from those around me. As stated before, in the primal faith stage, I was already aware of what to do and when by the age of two, but in these years, I became even more involved. Between the ages of 2 and 6 was when I started doing different activities in my church. I started memorizing verses to recite every Sabbath. I started going to Sabbath School in the mornings, instead of sitting with my mother and father in their Sabbath School Classes. I started going up on stage to do readings or to sing songs with the choir or even to say the memory text for that day.

This stage aligns with the Preoperational stage in Piaget’s Developmental Model. In this stage, I need concrete situations, and I still classify objects in simple ways. So again, I knew what was holy or unholy, and those were the only two schemas that I held when thinking on the concept of faith. Also, I think it is important to note that I did not know why I performed different religious rituals. The reason I did these rituals was because it is what I saw my elders doing, and at that age, I wanted nothing more than to be like my elders.

The next stage is a bit interesting because not only was I moving to a different stage in my life at this point, but I was also moving to a different country. I left Jamaica at age seven, around the same age that I came into the mythical/literal faith stage.

During this stage, I was able to work out the differences between verified fact and things that may be considered fantasy. In this stage, my faith became stories and rituals as well.

According to Piaget, during this stage, a child is able to think abstractly, con-

ceptualize, and explain physical experiences more clearly. From what I remember, during this time in my life, I did have a particular interest in the rituals of my faith. When I left Jamaica, I moved to the Turks and Caicos Islands, and there were only about 1,500 people on the entire Island where I lived. This means, of course, that my church was very small. It also meant that I was one of the only children in my church. This was a big change from my church in Jamaica where so many of the members were my age.

It was during this time that I became obsessed with communion. Everyone in my church was old enough to take communion, except for me. I started begging my parents to let me have some of the bread and the wine. My pastor would have to leave some of the bread and the grape juice for me after the service, and have his own mini communion with me. It was also around this time that I got baptized. My 7/8 year old mind probably thought I was getting baptized for all the right reasons, but all I can remember is that, one of the biggest deciding factors of my baptism was that, once I was baptized, I would be able to take communion.

This mythical/literal stage is also defined by the fact that a child’s source of religious authority begins to expand. This was the stage in Piaget’s Developmental model where I begin to think more abstractly, and, more importantly, I begin to form opinions of my own. This, paired with the fact that I left the Turks and Caicos around this time (age 9), and moved to California, was a dangerous combination. The reason why this was dangerous in the context of my faith was that, unlike in Jamaica and the Turks and Caicos, most of my peers in the public school I now attended did not go to church. Not only that, but a lot of them hadn’t even heard of Seventh Day Adventism. This made sticking to my religious background very hard. Not only was I the only black girl in my school, I also had a strange accent, and I couldn’t do anything on Friday nights or Saturdays because my religion said so.

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At that age, I yearned to fit in. This yearning to fit in, along with my newfound ability to include my peers and my teachers as sources of religious authority, made sticking to the Seventh Day Adventist version of faith very difficult. On top of that, at this stage, my faith was still largely based on rituals practiced, but I no longer wanted to practice the ritual drilled into my head from the time of Primal/ Undifferentiated Faith: I no longer wanted to keep the Sabbath holy. My new reason to conceptualize more clearly, had me thinking that, if faith wasn’t important to my teachers and friends, then it didn’t have to be important to me.

At that time in my life, I put my religion on the back burner. I stopped thinking about religion almost completely. When my friends would ask me why I couldn’t hang out on Saturdays, I would respond, explaining Seventh Day Adventism as something stupid and antiquated that my parents made me do. Another thing that impacted my religious faith at this time was the fact that my church in California was made up of almost all old people. It felt smaller than my church in the Turks and Caicos. And while, in the Turks and Caicos, there were fewer children than they were in Jamaica, in my church in California, there were no children at all. In fact, there weren’t even young adults, only far older people I had nothing in common with. The ritual of church became too much for me. I began bringing books and pencils to church so I could draw. I stopped trying to listen to the sermon, and instead, would make up stories in my head.

At that time, my dream in life was becoming a writer, so I would think of plots in my head, then, in the afternoon, I would write it down. Writing, became my way of giving meaning to the forces and relations that made up my life. I wrote about everything.

I turned the people around me into people from a fantasy. Especially in moments where I felt the world was unfair, or like I was an outcast, I would write a story in which I wasn’t.

At this point in my life, I started to

draw into myself, withdraw from those around me, because a fantasy life was easier than a real life. To be fair to myself, however, I was very different from those in my community, so it was hard for my peers to befriend me. Sticking to reading and writing was much easier.

The next stage that I find myself in, is the Synthetic/Conventional stage.

In this stage, rituals become values and morals. In this stage, I am able to claim my faith as my own. With the transition to this stage, I also transitioned into the Formal Operations Stage in Piaget’s Developmental Model. In this stage, cognition reaches the final form, and a person is able to make more concrete and rational judgements. This stage is supposed to be ages 13-18, but I don’t think that I reached this stage until I was age 16.

It could be that because I started putting faith on the backburner, because I thought of religious faith as just an antiquated ritual my parents made me perform, it took me a while to grow in faith. It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that faith was really brought to the forefront of my mind again. The reason for this being, that I came upon a new group of friends.

The first friend in this group that was instrumental in the determination of my faith was Sachi Spaulding. She was the first atheist that I was ever friends with. It was very interesting to me, being friends with her, because all my life, I had been taught that atheist were very bad people, yet there she was, very nice, very smart, and well connected with the world around her. With this, I started to believe that maybe religion was not important. The next individual in my friend group that made a very big impact on the way I see the world was Katelyn Adams.

Katelyn was my source of religious authority during my junior and senior years of high school. Her family was Mormon, a faith very similar to my own, and just as strict. Katelyn herself was not a Mormon, she did not believe that Mormonism was the ultimate determinate of faith. Part of the reason for this being that she is

a pansexual, and she did not feel as if her Mormon faith accounted for that. Instead, she spoke a lot about being a good person. She was the first person to point out to me that I did not need my religion in order to be a good human being. She practiced a different form of religious faith than I did. She told me, that she believed that there wasn’t just one correct religion. She believed that people should be able to pick and choose the best parts of each religion and claim them as their own. I did not understand that then as I do now, but that really had an impact on me. Because of her, it was easy for me to sever my connection to Adventism. Yes, I was going to church weekly, and yes I was forced to participate in these rituals, but instead, I would do it apathetically, I would always be on my phone at the service, and I would be ready to leave the church once the service was over. My ability to think and rationalize abstractly was instrumental in this, because I do not think that, at an earlier stage in my development, if Katelyn had expressed those same sentiment to me, I would have taken them to heart as I did.

The next year, my senior year, Katelyn impacted my faith again.

See, it was at this point that Katelyn got a girlfriend. This was a very dangerous situation because we knew that if her parents ever found out, they would be furious. Well, they did, and they were. They started trying conversion therapy on her. We would text all afternoon when we got home from school, but at some point in the night, I knew her phone would be taken from her, and she would be asked to sit in front of a computer screen and watch these videos.

I knew that my parents would have reacted the same way to a homosexual child. Because of this, resentment burned in my heart for God. I did not understand how someone like Sachi, who was atheist, who did not have God in her heart, could treat Katelyn and other members of the LGBTQ+ community with love and respect, yet my family, who has spent years in Adventism, mocks and ridicule them.

After church one Sabbath. 2007.

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I remember one day, hearing my father speak about a group of Trans Individuals in Jamaica who were stoned. Actually stoned, as in, they had rocks pelted at them as they left their homes one night. I remember him saying that they got what they deserve. This really left me shaken.

Not only was there anger in my heart for God, there was fear. I would go to church and not listen, because I was afraid of what I would hear in the sermon, I was afraid God would come into my mind, and force me to become someone I was not comfortable with, force me to become like my parents. The Formal Operation Stage in Piaget’s model is really noticeable here, because without this ability to deduct and think hypothetically, perhaps I would not have ever reached these conclusions. It is interesting, because this Synthetic/conventional stage described by Fowler, involves claiming faith as one’s own. In a way, I think I did, by refusing to accept the religion of my parents, and ostracizing myself from my religious community. Ultimately, I think that religious authority was the most important thing for me at this stage, as I had to choose from my parents and those in my community who saw religion one way, and my friends, who saw religion another way.

In my seventeenth and eighteenth year, when I went off to college, I was still so afraid of God, and still so angry at him, that I stopped going to church completely. College gave me the outlet to ignore God, and live a secular life. This did not last long. In my sophomore year of college, I entered into the Individuative/reflective stage of faith. It occurred after a religion class that I took with Dr. Jones. In this class, the professor really got me to reflect on my own faith, and helped me to start asking ques-

tions. These were the questions that I had been afraid to ask in high school, questions like: why are people of faith often the most close minded, the most bigoted, and the least likely to show this so called love of Christ? Later, in my junior year, I started questioning even more. One of the major factors that played into this was that I started rooming with a student chaplain.

We would go to church together, and I would agree with what the preacher was saying. At the same time, there was so much about the Bible, and Adventism in general that didn’t sit right with me. There is something about it that still doesn’t. I have late night talks with my roommate, and other members of the religious community that are further along in their walks than I am, and I ask these questions about God, and religion, and why we have to worship the way we do. No one ever has the answers that I want. I am so taken aback by the number of people that are comfortable not knowing the answer to these questions. I have tried to talk about this subject with peers, with family, with my pastors, and yet, none of them have had the answer I was looking for. It was because of this that, midway through my junior year, a couple months ago, I stopped going to church all together. Yes, there are certain parts of Adventism that I identify with, but also, I have so many questions that no one seems to be able to answer. It burns me, as a student, as someone seeking knowledge, that these answers aren’t out there in the universe. So, for now, instead of thinking about these questions, and being upset all the time about the fact that there are no answers, I just do not participate in the religious rituals I learned from I was a child.

I know there are two other stages of faith development, just as I know I have yet to reach them. I will say

this, however, there are aspects of the Conjunctive stage that I think applies to me. Because I am not sure if Seventh Day Adventism holds the whole truth, I am more open to the faith perspective of other people. I am willing to listen to whatever people have to say about their God or their style of worship. I am even willing to participate. So far, I have participated in Muslim, Hindu, and Chinese forms of worship, and I am still interested in trying more. I am looking forward to someday fully transitioning into the Conjunctive stage. One day, I would like to be okay with the fact that I cannot answer all of life’s question. For now, however, I still struggle with my faith, and I am still willing to wrestle with God a bit longer for the answers.

Part 2 In reflection, and in using these models, I think they were very fitting to my faith and psychological development. Of course, as it is with every model, there were aspects that were a bit off. For example, I came into the synthetic/conventional stage at a much later time than Fowler hypothesized I would. Also, I am not while I am in the Individuative/Reflective stage at this point in my life, there are aspects of the conjunctive stage that still apply to me. Other than that, I think these two models explain my development rather well. In fact, they interacted quite nicely to describe my adolescent years. One critique I do have about Piaget’s model is that it stops at age 15. Despite this fact, I still feel as if I am growing psychologically. The fact that Piaget’s model ended at 15 impeded my ability to discuss how these models interact in the later stages of my faith development.

I think all in all, however, I fit very nicely into the mold these psychologists expected me to be in.

After church another Sabbath, much later. 2017.

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worldview

Me and one of my best friends. 2017.

One day, a few weeks before the deadline for this paper, I began thinking about the twelve-page minimum requirement for my world view paper. This was so daunting that I decided to start my paper early, afraid that I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have enough to say to fill twelve pages. It turns out I have enough to fill twenty. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know when I began to be so introspective, but this world view paper was definitely instrumental in the realization that I now know myself better than I ever thought imaginable. Now, I share this knowledge with you, so that you can get a sneak peek into my thoughts, feelings, and actions 85

My brother’s 7th Birthday. 1999.

On The Advancement of my Worldview Throughout the Years Worldview Final Draft Winter 2018 When I was younger, about 11 years old, I was in middle school and my brother was in high school. He had taken a class wherein he learned that the human brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, did not fully develop until the age of 25. For those of you who do not know what the prefrontal cortex of the brain is, it is the structure that aids us in decision making and reasoning, especially in the cases of long term consequences and good judgement. I remember this vividly

because once my brother figured this out, he was insufferable. We would get into fights and instead of arguing with me he would just say, “Oh, that’s right! Your prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed yet.” All that time he neglected to mention that his was not developed either. Fast forward ten years later to an almost-fully-formed prefrontal cortex, I sit reflecting on the advancement of my world view through the years. I realize now that in my youth I did not think well when making judgements or considering long-term consequences. Even now I struggle but, thanks to The Indoctrination of La Sierra University, I am able to think through my thought processes and recognize what decisions I am making, why I am making them, and why they are important to my continual growth. La Sierra University taught me a lot about thinking (and I would hope so being that I am a psychology major) but what it taught me the most about was the idea of Seeking, Knowing, and Serving. The La Sierra University Mission Statement is as follows: As members of the diverse La Sierra University community, we are committed to inquiry, learning and service. Our community is rooted in the Cristian gospel and Seventh-day Adventist values and ideals. Our mission is: to seek truth, enlarging human understanding through scholarship, to know God, ourselves, and the world through reflection, instruction, and mentoring; and to serve others, contributing to the good of our local and global communities.

As I invite you into my mind through this paper, I will explain my growth in three phases: the past, the present, and the future. As I go through who I was, who I am, and who I will be, I will pay special attention to how I sought, how I knew, and how I served.

Who I Was I came to the United States of America at nine years old. According to personality psychologists (who I consider now simply because I write 87

Bottom image from my high school performance as Titania in a Midsummer Nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Dream. 2012.

Top left image from a 5th grade field trip. 2007.

Top right image from middle school with a friend. 2010.

this paper in the midst of my personality class), who you are as a person is relatively stable. It takes a big life event to change a person. Coming to America was my life changing event.

I was only nine at that time so truthfully, there was not much to change, but the culture of America and the culture of the Caribbean are so vastly different that I think the culture shock propelled me into a different sense of self. Prior to America, I was very family oriented. I grew as my parents wanted me to, did well in school because they were proud of me when I did, got baptized into a religion I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fully understand because they told me it was a good idea, and did all I could to make them happy. This was

the seeking, knowing and serving of nine-year-old me. Seeking knowledge through school because of my parents, knowing God through my parents, and serving my parents.

I am sure my parents cursed the day I began to learn what it meant to be an American. Looking back, it was in those moments that my world view stopped being shaped by my parents and started being shaped by my friends. Now, I haven’t yet taken the developmental psychology class here at La Sierra (and seeing as the only time it is offered is 10 am in the morning I will probably never take a developmental psychology class here), but I imagine that a developmental psychologist would be saying that this shift in perspective from parents to peers happens to everyone, not just the multicultural islanders that move to America at nine years old. In response to that, I would explain to them how I hit the ground running.

See, even as a child I was never very secure in myself. Up until about two years ago, I spent a lot of time looking at others to define who I was as a person. I thank God that my prefrontal cortex is slowly but surely developing, helping me to realize that who I am shouldn’t be who my best friend is also. But I digress. The point is, from the ages of 9 to 17, I tried to be like everyone else around me.

Seeking The first real friend I made when I came to America was a little girl with thick jet-black hair, olive skin, and round Harry Potter like glasses.

She always wore black, her smile was crooked, and her bag pack was always too big from all the books she was currently reading. I met her a few months after I came to Sassarini Elementary School. For a time at Sassarini, I was popular - that popularity was short lived. I distinctly remember that on my first day of school Aaron Pino and Ariana Elliot fought over who would get to sit next to me in class. Then, they grabbed my hand and ran out to the playground screaming about the new girl in class. “She’s from Jamaica and she’s got a cool accent, mon!”

they had said in a poor approximation of what I assume was supposed to be a Jamaican accent. Eventually though, the inability to understand what I was saying got old. Also, the fact that my parents never really allowed me to go anywhere with anyone taught me that even hanging out with someone for nine hours a day at school was not enough to form lasting friendships.

Consequently, I finished my fourthgrade year sad and alone. I suppose here is where I would also talk about getting bullied, but I don’t want to talk about the bullying. I always talk about the bullying and, even if you haven’t heard my bullying story before, trust me when I say it is very similar to all the other bullying stories you’ve heard. Some people were mean to me because they didn’t like how I looked or my accent or the beads in my hair (I’m still not quite sure which one it was that set them off ). And, in any case, some of the friends I made later in life here at La Sierra University taught me that my bullying experience could have been much worse than being mocked and picked last in kickball.

I tell the story of Ariana and Aaron and my bullies is to illustrate that when Alicia Orellano came into my life I was desperate for a friend. I am grateful that the friend God gave me was Alicia because she introduced me to reading, and thus began the seeking of my childhood. She brought me to the library, showed me all her favorite books, and taught me that when the real world sucked, fantasy worlds can always do you one better.

So, in the last year I spent with her at Sassarrini, I learned to seek knowledge through the books she liked. As I moved from Sassarrini to Altimira Middle School, this process of reading what my friends liked in order to gain knowledge continued with a girl named Angelina, and then on to Cecilia, and then on to Jacquie, and then on to Katelyn. I switched “best friends” as often as I finished book series. As I floated from friend group to friend group, never really interested in seeking knowledge for myself. The La Sierra mission tells me to seek truth.

Then, I felt my friends knew absolute truth, and if I wanted this truth, I just needed to blindly conform to them.

In reflection, I now realize this blind conformity comes from fear. I was alone when I first arrived in America and it was terrible. Following that, I did everything in my power not to be alone again. I think some part of me always wanted to explore, to learn more, to seek, but a more dominant part led me to being afraid of seeking by myself.

Serving Pardon me as I break form to talk about serving before knowing. The Big Anecdote for serving happens chronologically before The Big Anecdote for knowing. I was eleven or twelve then, a middle schooler. One night, my mother called me into the kitchen where the house phone was located, telling me that there was a call for me. This was strange because the only people who ever called me were family members from Jamaica.

I knew it wasn’t family on the other end because when talking to them, my mom spoke in loud exaggerated patois that could be heard throughout the whole house. Reluctant and confused, I took the phone from her. On the other end of the line was a “friend” of mine from my middle school. Her name was Bronwyn. She was the friend between Angelina and Cecilia who wasn’t really a friend at all. That night, she called me sobbing so hard that I stayed on the phone with her for several minutes just trying to decipher exactly what was wrong from her half-sobbed words. Apparently, my next-door neighbor Haley, who had always (and continues to be) been really nice to me, had recognized that my “friendship” with Bronwyn really consisted of her bullying me out of my lunch. After witnessing this for a few months, Haley told her mom who told then told the principal. The principal then called Bronwyn’s mom who then forced her to call me and apologize.

This comes to mind every time I think of serving because during this time in my life, who I was included unwavering service to my friends.

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This blind service to my friends can be linked back to that fourth-grade year of Sassarini Elementary that I spent alone. I thought that if I did everything I could to make my friends happy they would be so pleased with me that they would continue being my friends. It turns out that this thinking was not faulty. Truthfully, who is going to say no to a servant? And essentially that’s what I was. I behaved how they wanted me to, I gave them what they wanted and allowed them to treat me however they wanted. I was so bound to their service that I could not tell when their “friendships” began bordering on cruelty. I was so dedicated to being like them that I could not tell that I was losing pieces of myself. And when it all came to a head, when I began to become depressed because I couldn’t change myself to become who they wanted me to be, I began to hate myself. I gave so much more of my service to these friends than I realized at that time. I gave my sanity to their service. I lived in depression and social anxiety as I did everything I could to be like them, but consistently found myself falling short. This way of being was draining, but I lived with it for most of my life.

Knowing Growing up, I felt I knew more of the world than my peers did, but I did not know God and I certainly did not know myself. By the age of nine I had lived in three different countries, four different houses, and had attended four different schools. This is more than most people could say at that age, and I believe that these experiences caused me to see the world a lot differently than they did. I realized a lot of different things as I moved around in my childhood, but most importantly, I realized that the world was so much larger than I could ever imagined it to be. Just the stark difference between Jamaica and California made me wonder how different Europe or Asia or the Middle East could be. In my pre-teen years I saw Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast, and I connected deeply with Belle.

Despite being stuck in small town af-

ter small town, I realized that there was so much more that the world had to offer. I wanted adventure in the great wide somewhere. Unfortunately, my parents were homebodies, so I spent most of my childhood in-between Jamaica and my hometown in California. I knew more about what it meant to live in different countries than my peers, but I yearned for so much more. This theme of yearning for more knowledge of the world will return as I talk about who I am and who I will be.

On the topic of God, I did not know him in my youth and I did not want to.

The idea of religion for children is nice when paired with socializing because it not only presents away for them to connect with God, but it also presents away for them to connect with each other. Unfortunately, religion did neither of those things for me from the time I moved to California and onwards. See, my family and I ended up in a relatively Godless area. Most of my school peers were atheist or non-practicing Catholics and most of the people I went to church with were four times my age. Because of that, church was boring to me. You could understand how as a 13-year-old, I had trouble connecting to the sermons and activities of my 50-year-old pastor. As I grew, I also became more socially anxious which meant that even when we went to other churches outside of my small town, I could not connect with my those my age. More often than not I choose to sit with my parents rather than my peers. I went to adult Sabbath Schools, adult sermons, sat at adult potluck tables, and zoned out. In fact, I spent most, if not all, of my formative religious years zoned out.

Religiosity presented a problem with my peers. As mentioned before, Sonoma was a Godless town. This was probably one of the biggest culture shock I faced after moving to America.

In Jamaica, there was a Seventh-Day Adventist church on every corner, in Sonoma, the majority of my friends had not even heard of Seventh-Day Adventist. This manifested itself into a problem as my friends began to ask

me to hang out on Friday nights and Saturdays. Soon I learned to make up excuse after excuse as to why I could not hang out on those days because no one understood what it meant to have strictly religious parents. Looking back, it is easy to see how my lack of many friends came from being Seventh-Day Adventist. I imagine that my incessant “no’s” in response to people who wanted to hang out with me eventually drove my them away. Nevertheless, as I entered high school, I made one friend who understood what it meant to have strictly religious parents. Unfortunately for my relationship with God, this friend hated Him. During her middle school years, Katelyn Adams discovered that she was pansexual. Pansexuality, as defined by her, meant that she could be sexually attracted to anyone regardless of their gender or lack thereof. Of course, she knew this wouldn’t sit well with her religious parents and their judgmental God, so she turned away from them and their Mormon lifestyle. I’m sure that you can gather, from the 7 pages prior to this, that who my friends were and what they thought and what they believed was very important to me. It didn’t take long for Katelyn to transform me her personal social justice warrior who was less than pleased that God would torture her for just being who she was. As my friendship with her grew, so did my disdain for Christian society.

Like my other friends before her, I entered into true service to her, giving myself over wholly. I readily did this with anyone who came along with a promise of being a friend. It is for that reason that I did not know myself. In my freshman year of college, I learned a few things about cuckoo birds (follow me here, I promise this analogy is going somewhere). See cuckoo birds are brood parasites meaning the mother cuckoo mimics her eggs to look like that of other birds, then she will sneak into that other bird’s nest, kill some of her eggs, and plant her cuckoo egg in its stead. When born, the baby cuckoo will mimic the other birds to confuse the mother into

thinking it’s hers. It will also fight the other baby birds for the affection and the food of the mother. Those birds that do not die at the hands of the mother cuckoo, die because the baby cuckoo is taking all the food. I am both the mother and the baby cuckoo. I implanted myself into so many friend groups growing up simply by imitating them, I made no efforts to be myself because I figured that would not get me the love and affection conformity did. In the end, these friendships died like the other birds did of starvation. I spent so long trying to mimic other people that I never really learned to know myself. My interests, my hobbies, my behaviors, my way of speaking, all came from either the friends I had or the people I looked up to in my favorite books. The harsh reality of all of this, coming into college, I had no idea who I was.

Bottom image from the play Alice In Wonderland. 2014. | Top image from graduation. 2014.

Who I am I read John Green’s Looking for Alaska for the first time in the 8th grade, then again in high school, and once more before coming to La Sierra. In the first couple of pages of the book, the main character, Miles “Pudge” Halter, is getting ready to go to a new school. Mile’s parents throw him a going away party that no one comes to, and with pity in their eyes 91

they ask him if his lack of friends is why he wants to leave. Miles denies it. He explains that the last words of the great poet Francois Rabelais were “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” Like Miles, I didn’t think I could find the Great Perhaps in my town and I didn’t want to die before I began to seek.

This yearning for something better affected the choices I made when applying for colleges. I didn’t apply for anything near home. I applied to a university in Washington, one in Canada and a few in Southern California, nothing less than seven hours drive away. Looking back, I realized that I was suffering from a grass-is-greener mindset. I thought that anything would be better than my current life setting.

I wanted to go to UC Irvine. My family and I flew down, stayed with my aunt for a few days and booked a UCI tour. My parents decided to kill two birds with one stone and booked a tour for La Sierra as well. I fell in love with UC Irvine immediately.

Who wouldn’t? With over 30,000 students, I felt that I would be able to find at least one person who was similar to me. I dreamt of finding a group of people with whom I would click, and we would be friends for life. On top of being unsatisfied by my small town, I was always unsatisfied by the people I found myself around. I realized recently that the reason I flitted from group to group in middle and high school was because I was never satisfied. I always thought there would be someone better. I thought I would one day be able to find someone who just, without trying, understood me and would help me understand myself.

I left behind my delusions of friendship at UCI as my family and I drove to Riverside. I fell asleep while my parents fell in love. I knew from the moment I got here that there was nothing for me on this campus, but the part of myself that was still concerned with how my parents saw me brought me to La Sierra anyway. Over the past four years, La Sierra has changed me. For one, I know so much more about the world and myself than I did when I entered. Also, this

God-centered society that La Sierra offered no doubt affected me in a way that UCI would not have been able to. But, perhaps the most important thing La Sierra taught me was how to put myself before others. Although sometimes I have dreams of what it would have been like to have gone to UCI, although I have mountains and mountains of regret about how I spent my college years, I have learned to focus on the positive things La Sierra has offered me and how it has changed me for the better.

Seeking At the top of my list of regrets is the friendships I left behind in Sonoma. I said goodbye to my friends, sure that Southern California would find me something better. It didn’t. But this paper is not about my regrets but rather what came of my actions. As I explained before, what I sought in middle and high school was very dependent on what my peers wanted to seek. I followed them for the truth. At La Sierra, I had no such constrains. I was able to take whatever classes and join whatever clubs interested me.

This was instrumental in helping me find myself. First, it helped me realize what my passion was. When I came to La Sierra, I thought that I would study pre-medical sciences and one day become a psychiatrist. I have no idea why I thought science was the route for me. Looking back on my interest in high school I loved to read and write and socialize. Luckily, as I joined organizations, I realized that my studies were misplaced and that my focus was better aimed on was business and marketing. These classes and clubs also taught me that it was okay for me to form my own beliefs about the world. For a long time, what I believed was just another thing I mimicked from my peers. The structure of my high school course schedule allowed my friends to always be around me, thus always influencing my way of thinking. In my classes here at La Sierra, I had to figure out my opinions for myself. There was no one on my shoulder telling me what to say. Figuring out what I believe

has been a long road, and there are still times that I take classes or listen to lectures that change my point of view. The most important part of this journey, however, was learning that it is okay to have an opinion different from my peers. In my earlier years, I would have been afraid of saying something my friends did not agree with in fear of losing them. Now, I say what I believe and, luckily, my opinions have never been a deal breaker for my friends. This realization has helped to clear up most of my insecurities as well.

Seeking without the constraints of friends also led me to traveling. I visited Italy the summer after my freshman year. I wanted to visit another country, and I had the funds and the opportunity, but I was afraid of going alone. I found no one that I could convince to travel with me, but I decided to swallow my fear and go anyway.

I think this is probably the biggest fear I have had to overcome. The few months of fourth and fifth grade that I spent without friends made afraid to return to that era of loneliness. This trip to Italy however, made me realize that being alone wasn’t as haunting as nine-year-old me once experienced it. I loved every second of Italy.

I came out of that experience not only learning rudimentary Italian, but also learning that the world is vast, and it is waiting for me. If being afraid of solitude means that I don’t get to experience the world like I did that summer, I will welcome solitude with open arms.

Knowing In Sonoma, I knew more about the world than my peers. At La Sierra, I realized just how little I knew.

So many people I met here have lived in more countries, met more people, and traveled more than I. Realizing how little I knew ended up being a driving force to learn more. I worked hard to overcome my social anxiety to the point that I could hold conversations with people. I realized that there was so much I could learn just by engaging in a conversation with someone else. Looking back, a lot of

Kelly & I. Polaroid. 2017.

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what I learned at La Sierra did not come from my classes, but through the opportunities La Sierra afforded me that allowed me to interact with more people. Traveling to Italy, Malaysia and Singapore allowed me to meet people on their own turf, to get to understand their cultures and traditions, and to further my knowledge of the world. Not only did these travels allow me to know more about the world, but it allowed me to know more about God. The world is so vast. Each culture has knowledge to bestow upon me of traditions I have never experienced before. Experiencing these traditions first hand made me pause and think about the world as I knew it and God as I knew Them (notice the pronoun shift). After I my trip to Malaysia I began to think about how the religions of the world were so multitudinous and yet somehow, at birth, I just lucked out enough to find myself in the right one. As I thought

more on God and my religion, it became harder for me to just accept this “luck.” I began thinking that perhaps God has manifested himself in many different ways and my religion, my concept of Them, is not the only correct concept to exist. These beliefs now show themselves in how I interact with those of my previous Christian sect – I denounce the remnant doctrine of the Seventh Day Adventist church. It shows in how I call God “Them” to bring light to the fact that I serve a non-binary, omnipresent God who is somehow everything anyone could need them to be. I know my God now, and They are not the God that was forced on me in my childhood.

They are not the God of my mother and my father. They are not the God of my friends. They are my God, and I commune with Them and I feel at peace with Them.

Lastly, my time here has shaped how I know myself. As stated before,

I have a hard time letting go of the memory of my friends in Northern California. Perhaps, to some extent, that has affected how I made friends here at La Sierra. Perhaps I am not as close to those I have met here because they could never compete with the memory of my friends at home.

But, not finding friends that I instantly “clicked” with has not turned out all that bad for me. Through this unexpected solitude, I have learned so much about myself. When I sit in my psychology classes, I think about how the theories I learn serve to describe myself. When I talk to other people who are in tune with their feelings, I try to mimic what they do with the intent of learning about myself as they have about themselves. Last week a friend of mine told me that the way I know who I am and am secure in it made her want to get to know herself as well. I was surprised to hear that, because I had never thought of myself

as someone who was in tune with who I was. Truthfully, for much of my early years, I was not. I only knew who I was in the context of other people.

So much has changed in the last four years. I had wished, my freshman year, that Riverside would help me find someone who would know me better than anyone else had, and it did. It helped me find myself.

Serving I don’t know when I became a psychologist, but somewhere between my junior and senior year I acquired a set of friends that came to me with pretty much every problem they had.

I was always willing to listen and to help however I could. Somewhere along the line, however, I realized that I was falling into the pattern of friendship that I had in middle and high school. These relationships were incredibly one sided. I was giving so much time and effort to people who

didn’t spend that time on me. There were only so many times I could ask someone about themselves without wondering when they would ask me about myself. Then, a few weeks ago, I took a personality test that focused on agreeableness. The results indicated that I was less concerned with other people’s needs than my own (but that I was I very concerned with human suffering and was relatively easily moved to feeling vicarious pain and pity). Somewhere along the line, my mindset had changed from otherto self-concern. This mindset came from my shift in focus from serving others to serving myself. I spent so many years of my life focusing on what other people wanted from me, that now it is time for me to focus on myself. This shift in perspective manifested itself in many different ways in my life. It shows my willingness to say no to people. For a long time, I thought I owed it to everyone to do

as they asked and to do it to the best of my ability. That kind of mindset is so draining. I would give 110% to people who wouldn’t even give 5% for me.

It shows in how I take time to foster the hobbies that I like and to share my opinion with other people. This so vastly different from my high school years where I just adopted whatever hobbies or opinions my friend had at the moment. Now, I take the time to think things through, to understand who I am and what I enjoy.

This is not to say that I don’t believe in serving others, but rather that for too long I spent my time only serving others and, as I enter into adulthood, I am happy that I have found a place between serving others and serving myself.

Who I will be I read the Harry Potter series for the first time when I was about 10 years old. I never got past the sec-

Jonathan Specht and Kirsten. 2018.

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ond book because my parents haunted me with stories about the evils of Harry Potter and how demons would come after me if I continued to read it. I picked up Harry Potter again my sophomore year of college and I fell in love. I took many tests to discover my Hogwarts House. These tests either placed me in Slytherin or in Ravenclaw, but, despite these tests inability to agree I have come to claim Ravenclaw as my own. To me, Ravenclaw is not defined just by cleverness and wit, but by finding the things you love and choosing to learn all that you can about it. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know if I would have been a Ravenclaw when I read the book at 10 years old, but I am definitely one now. My interests have come to define who I am in true Ravenclaw fashion. Not only that but these interests propel me to seek and to know. To seek out more that I can dedicate myself to, and to know more about those that I have already

Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. 2018.

found. As I continue on past La Sierra and into my adult life, I hope to never forget my position as a Ravenclaw. I hope to continue to seek and to learn about that which I love. On the topic of serving (not so easily defined by my Ravenclaw traits), I have realized that I have made many mistakes with the people in my life and I am dedicated to not making those same mistakes again. I want to keep the friends that I have made here forever so that whatever place I end up in next, I will not look back and think about how no one there can match with the friends I have here.

Finally, as I finish my time here at La Sierra University, I am going to read Looking for Alaska one more time. I have no idea what journeys adult life hold, but whatever it is, I hope I will learn just as much from it as I have from here.

I go to seek a Great Perhaps.

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Dear Reader, I spent a lot of time in the past few months working on volumes I & II of this portfolio. It has been a long journey of a lot of sleepless nights, designing and redesigning, writing and rewriting, but at the end of all of this I have found gratitude. I am enormously grateful that La Sierra Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Honors Program gave me a place where I could not only learn but also find creative ways to explore my interest.

I am excited to take all that I have learned in the past four years here at La Sierra and apply it to the real world! A special thank you to all my professors and friends that have guided me along the way.