Oh, what month it has been at the law office. Strange things have happened here....(In the hanging tree). No, seriously. Some occurrences have been brought to my attention that I feel should be noted in my blog to perhaps help all of you readers out there (allllll 6 of you). Crazy things have happened people. If walls could speak....
If walls could speak that would be just great because they could tell us who on earth is making out all of these checks to our office and forgetting to put their name on it! I mean it's freaky stuff! Life lesson: When you become a big kid and you have to go to the bank...go to CHASE bank and take advantage of their free strawberry water...it is imperative to note that when you are making a check to someone, especially a business with hundreds of people making out very similar checks, you should sign your name so the business knows who it is from and they can credit your account. This funny little incident happened three times in one week which may not seem like that big of a deal, but when three people get their statements back in the mail and realize that their bills have not changed, they still owe the same amount PLUS late fees, I have a feeling it won't be so funny anymore.
Something that might also help your situation when you call our office in a flaming bright blue rage, is a date. I'm not saying get yourself a man, then you will be less mad (although that might also work), I'm saying it may be helpful to note the exact date of the month you wrote that check or deposited money into our account. A little proof never hurt anybody... women, perhaps a selfie of you holding your check with that manly bank teller? Men, maybe... yeah men you should just write your name- Wouldn't want a restraining order or anything. We're not that kind of law office.
Friday, February 27, 2015
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Blog 16: Answer 2
1. What is the most significant factor in ensuring a client's confidence that the attorney will exert his/her best ability upon their immigration case.
2. The most significant factor in ensuring a client's confidence is to truthfully keep the client well informed of the case progression.
3. The best way to ensure a client's confidence in their attorney is by having the client continuously staying physically and mentally involved in the construction of their case to emphasize the feeling of a team effort.
4. Reason #1. Simply from personal experience at from working at my mentorship, I have noticed a difference between the mindset between those who come in to check up who have had no updates with their case, and those who come in to check up bringing back supplies for their case, or who have just called a few days ago in regards to the status of their case. People who are involved are more calm and therefore more confident.
Reason #2. In the real world when someone gets admitted to the hospital, you will call to check up on their well being whenever you cannot be in the hospital room. It is the same procedure with a case, when someone is admitted into a detention facility or back to their native country and their family cannot be by their side, our office is like the connection between the family and the member, in a way we are the hospital- Aiding the broken and keeping people together.
Reason #3. Sometimes as a child when in the middle of doing something important, our mothers would send us out to the other room to do remedial tasks such as putting something away or giving us something small to do to help out? Like when almost finishing the baking of a cake, she would assign you to get out the napkins you would later use to clean up all of the mess? Sometimes our office has to ask clients to run little favors like getting family pictures to put in files or retrieving birth certificates, these things may seem like something to get the client out of the way but in actuality, we really do need these things and every little bit of information helps. Though we may be asking clients to get the napkins, we really need them. Who likes a mess?
5. The best printed source I have would be "The Public Speaking Handbook" by Susan J. Beebe.
6. Another source that supports my answer would have to be "Immigration" by Debra A. Miller.
7. In conclusion, I look forward to researching more on the customer service aspect of immigration and not the laws that must be abided when providing that service.
2. The most significant factor in ensuring a client's confidence is to truthfully keep the client well informed of the case progression.
3. The best way to ensure a client's confidence in their attorney is by having the client continuously staying physically and mentally involved in the construction of their case to emphasize the feeling of a team effort.
4. Reason #1. Simply from personal experience at from working at my mentorship, I have noticed a difference between the mindset between those who come in to check up who have had no updates with their case, and those who come in to check up bringing back supplies for their case, or who have just called a few days ago in regards to the status of their case. People who are involved are more calm and therefore more confident.
Reason #2. In the real world when someone gets admitted to the hospital, you will call to check up on their well being whenever you cannot be in the hospital room. It is the same procedure with a case, when someone is admitted into a detention facility or back to their native country and their family cannot be by their side, our office is like the connection between the family and the member, in a way we are the hospital- Aiding the broken and keeping people together.
Reason #3. Sometimes as a child when in the middle of doing something important, our mothers would send us out to the other room to do remedial tasks such as putting something away or giving us something small to do to help out? Like when almost finishing the baking of a cake, she would assign you to get out the napkins you would later use to clean up all of the mess? Sometimes our office has to ask clients to run little favors like getting family pictures to put in files or retrieving birth certificates, these things may seem like something to get the client out of the way but in actuality, we really do need these things and every little bit of information helps. Though we may be asking clients to get the napkins, we really need them. Who likes a mess?
5. The best printed source I have would be "The Public Speaking Handbook" by Susan J. Beebe.
6. Another source that supports my answer would have to be "Immigration" by Debra A. Miller.
7. In conclusion, I look forward to researching more on the customer service aspect of immigration and not the laws that must be abided when providing that service.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Blog 15- Independent Component 2 Approval
1. For the next 30 hours, I intend to add an additional research and creativity to my senior project by taking a class at Citrus College on the Ethics of Philosophy.
2. I will upload my work such as essays, speeches of my favorite quotes from the required reading to demonstrate evidence of my taking of the class.
3. This will correspond with my senior project because it will give me a foundation for not just justice and law, but the morality that humans have to maintain while working with these elements. It is something I personally struggle with, finding the line between my morals and and what the law says. Perhaps this class will help me justify the actions of the government, and those in charge if I approach it with a more openminded knowledgable perspective.
4. A new tab is added under my senior project hours.
2. I will upload my work such as essays, speeches of my favorite quotes from the required reading to demonstrate evidence of my taking of the class.
3. This will correspond with my senior project because it will give me a foundation for not just justice and law, but the morality that humans have to maintain while working with these elements. It is something I personally struggle with, finding the line between my morals and and what the law says. Perhaps this class will help me justify the actions of the government, and those in charge if I approach it with a more openminded knowledgable perspective.
4. A new tab is added under my senior project hours.
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Blog 14- Independent Component 1
LITERAL:
(A) I, Marissa Jasso, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 33 hours of work.
(B)
(C) My hours for this whole component are updated on the upper right hand corner of my blog.
(D) What did I do? Before I explain what I did, I feel it is best to explain my reasoning behind why I did what I did, so that hopefully you will see the strategy behind my actions.
Because my senior project is not just regarding immigration law, but rather more customer service, I found it best to find a class to better suit my desired needs at this point in my project. So far I have done a lot of my research on immigration law, and I feel like I am getting a great grasp on the politics behind law, on the specific services our law firm provides and on the cutting edge thinking needed to survive in the law office and court trials, but one thing I feel I am struggling with the most are the clients. I can study books for hours on types of law and regulation and rules for addressing certain cases, because they are memorable facts that can be obtained and regurgitated. Working with people coming from all different parts of the world, and finding the strength to appeal to each one without looking too shy or too forward is a challenge for me. Coming to International Polytechnic High School for all four years, you would think I would have learned how to speak in front of crowds, but yet every time a new customer walks in the door, those butterflies in my stomach (more like a zoo) never seem to disappear. I not only wanted to find a way for this independent component to benefit myself, but also to help others. I wanted to find a way to get my point across in a more simplistic manner. I found that when speaking to people my nervousness would compound upon my being flustered and somehow my words would get lost in translation. As much as I tried to simplify what I was saying or get to the point faster, sometimes the things I said would just not get through and the client would stand there staring at me in utter confusion. I needed guidance from somebody with experience in this field, someone with the expertise to give me more than just simple tips and fun facts on how you stay calm. With this in mind, I found a public speaking class at Citrus Community College. For my independent component one, I completed a series of essays written to accompany my many speeches which was the basis of the class throughout the course of 10 weeks.
I took a public speaking class called "Public Address 101." I had not only had to sit through 33 hours of lecture (not that I am complaining about it...I had the greatest professor in all the land), but I had to read the required texts accompanied by the lecture which was a book previously mentioned called "The Public Speaking Handbook" which by the way is no "handbook" at all, it's huge. We had to read a total of 450 pages throughout the the course which was broken down into 7 parts- Audience Centered Speaking Process, Analyzing an Audience, Preparing Statements, Crafting a Speech, Delivering a Speech, Types of Speeches and Appendixes. The 7 parts were divided up into 18 chapters, each with a minimum of 3 subsections and a maximum of 7. The chapters were oddly enough still required to be read, though usually in no way tied in with our lecture topics until weeks later. The professors timing was off because she had an older version of the book that she insisted on keeping to teach from even though she informed her students (myself included) to buy the 4th edition because she had briefly reviewed it and found it contained more relevant information.
Throughout the class, we were assigned to have many speeches, but just 10 weeks of speaking in front of strangers wasn't going to be enough to cure our stage fright or make us good speakers- We had to learn. This is the reason our professor insisted on lecturing for a good amount of time instead of forcing us to present on random things constantly. We had set speeches, each with a date and specific type of speech we were assigned to construct and preform. We had midterms and finals just as any other General Education class and this was all mentioned to us the first day as well as on the syllabus so people knew what they were getting into, as did I, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Speeches and Outlines:
Throughout the course of the class I had to prepare and recite many speeches. I had to create a personal experience speech, an informative speech, an informative outline, a persuasive speech, persuasive outline, a refutative speech, a final speech and a final outline. In addition we also had our midterm, our final and our impromptu speeches in which we were expected to come up with random topics to speak upon three times throughout the course. Our outlines were research based, written in MLA format and all required particular numbers of sources regarding the topic of the speech.
INTERPRETIVE:
I was lucky enough to have an instructor who allowed us to take notes on our laptops. During every lecture, I would take notes on a Word Document. In addition, I also saved the speeches/outlines that I wrote and submitted. What better evidence than the documents themselves?
Because I cannot upload Word Documents directly from my computer onto Blogger, and I do not know how to embed, I had to get creative. I have screen shotted two of my most popularly well received essays in which you may read as pictures!
Here is my Informative Speech written on the Injustices of the College Application System. I realized that I needed to find a topic that I could speak about knowledgeably and formally, but something that could also be relevant to what I am going through with my mentorship and with my life, which is how I came up with College Application System Injustices. While writing version after version of the speech I came to realize my most natural way of formally speaking. I found a comfortable middle ground between professionalism and my most relaxed state of being and while rehearsing consistently in front of family and friends I found that I had a confidence within me that I most likely wouldn't have stumbled upon any other way than my practicing as I had.
Here is my Persuasive Speech/Outline written on the correlation between Vegetarianism and Heart Disease. When choosing a topic for my persuasive speech, the instructor said to write about something that I happen to have a passion for, so I chose vegetarianism. Although this topic has nothing to do with my senior project, learning how to speak in front of a classroom full of strangers definitely helped my anxiety level when I had to go back to the office and speak in front of just one stranger.
Persuasion helps me during my mentorship. Learning how to persuade people is definitely an art I have not yet mastered, but it is needed in everyday in the workplace environment to talk to clients. Persuasion is needed with clients every day to ensure that they either will be persuaded to hire us on their behalf, or be persuaded to pay a higher price, or even just pay in total, clients need to be swung onto our side and for that to happen it is imperative I speak authoritatively and convincingly. I had to write multiple drafts of this one outline for my speech, editing phrases and words to make it more convincing. This is the same thing my mentor does when writing briefs or submitting documents to people in charge of their clients future. Law is a hard set strictly bound piece of wire, but if I've learned anything through mentorship and all of my efforts in the class of persuasion, it's that sometimes wires need to be bent...
(A) I, Marissa Jasso, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 33 hours of work.
(B)
- My main source of reference was a textbook bought online from ValoreBooks.com called "The Public Speaking Handbook", 4th edition by Steven & Susan Beebe. Cited in MLA format is: Beebe, Steven A., and Susan J. Beebe. The Public Speaking Handbook. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2005. Print. I used this book every single class period and this is not including all of the hours spent using it to help me construct speeches, study for midterms, quizzes, finals and complete assignments.
- This particular website was mentioned to us by our class instructor. It discusses the fear of public speaking, but it also has numerous links to other phobias and the point of going on the website is to realize that some of the other phobias are way worse that public speaking. Oddly enough, the website actually worked...There IS Something Worse.
- On the first day of class, our homework was to go online, find, print out and return read and in hand an article called 5 Reasons Everyone Should Take A Public Speaking Course. In fact, our first lecture was based off of this article as well as our class analysis of that piece for that day. I would have to mention it as a pretty valuable source not only to the class, but to my senior project.
(C) My hours for this whole component are updated on the upper right hand corner of my blog.
(D) What did I do? Before I explain what I did, I feel it is best to explain my reasoning behind why I did what I did, so that hopefully you will see the strategy behind my actions.
Because my senior project is not just regarding immigration law, but rather more customer service, I found it best to find a class to better suit my desired needs at this point in my project. So far I have done a lot of my research on immigration law, and I feel like I am getting a great grasp on the politics behind law, on the specific services our law firm provides and on the cutting edge thinking needed to survive in the law office and court trials, but one thing I feel I am struggling with the most are the clients. I can study books for hours on types of law and regulation and rules for addressing certain cases, because they are memorable facts that can be obtained and regurgitated. Working with people coming from all different parts of the world, and finding the strength to appeal to each one without looking too shy or too forward is a challenge for me. Coming to International Polytechnic High School for all four years, you would think I would have learned how to speak in front of crowds, but yet every time a new customer walks in the door, those butterflies in my stomach (more like a zoo) never seem to disappear. I not only wanted to find a way for this independent component to benefit myself, but also to help others. I wanted to find a way to get my point across in a more simplistic manner. I found that when speaking to people my nervousness would compound upon my being flustered and somehow my words would get lost in translation. As much as I tried to simplify what I was saying or get to the point faster, sometimes the things I said would just not get through and the client would stand there staring at me in utter confusion. I needed guidance from somebody with experience in this field, someone with the expertise to give me more than just simple tips and fun facts on how you stay calm. With this in mind, I found a public speaking class at Citrus Community College. For my independent component one, I completed a series of essays written to accompany my many speeches which was the basis of the class throughout the course of 10 weeks.
I took a public speaking class called "Public Address 101." I had not only had to sit through 33 hours of lecture (not that I am complaining about it...I had the greatest professor in all the land), but I had to read the required texts accompanied by the lecture which was a book previously mentioned called "The Public Speaking Handbook" which by the way is no "handbook" at all, it's huge. We had to read a total of 450 pages throughout the the course which was broken down into 7 parts- Audience Centered Speaking Process, Analyzing an Audience, Preparing Statements, Crafting a Speech, Delivering a Speech, Types of Speeches and Appendixes. The 7 parts were divided up into 18 chapters, each with a minimum of 3 subsections and a maximum of 7. The chapters were oddly enough still required to be read, though usually in no way tied in with our lecture topics until weeks later. The professors timing was off because she had an older version of the book that she insisted on keeping to teach from even though she informed her students (myself included) to buy the 4th edition because she had briefly reviewed it and found it contained more relevant information.
Throughout the class, we were assigned to have many speeches, but just 10 weeks of speaking in front of strangers wasn't going to be enough to cure our stage fright or make us good speakers- We had to learn. This is the reason our professor insisted on lecturing for a good amount of time instead of forcing us to present on random things constantly. We had set speeches, each with a date and specific type of speech we were assigned to construct and preform. We had midterms and finals just as any other General Education class and this was all mentioned to us the first day as well as on the syllabus so people knew what they were getting into, as did I, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Speeches and Outlines:
Throughout the course of the class I had to prepare and recite many speeches. I had to create a personal experience speech, an informative speech, an informative outline, a persuasive speech, persuasive outline, a refutative speech, a final speech and a final outline. In addition we also had our midterm, our final and our impromptu speeches in which we were expected to come up with random topics to speak upon three times throughout the course. Our outlines were research based, written in MLA format and all required particular numbers of sources regarding the topic of the speech.
INTERPRETIVE:
I was lucky enough to have an instructor who allowed us to take notes on our laptops. During every lecture, I would take notes on a Word Document. In addition, I also saved the speeches/outlines that I wrote and submitted. What better evidence than the documents themselves?
Because I cannot upload Word Documents directly from my computer onto Blogger, and I do not know how to embed, I had to get creative. I have screen shotted two of my most popularly well received essays in which you may read as pictures!
Here is my Informative Speech written on the Injustices of the College Application System. I realized that I needed to find a topic that I could speak about knowledgeably and formally, but something that could also be relevant to what I am going through with my mentorship and with my life, which is how I came up with College Application System Injustices. While writing version after version of the speech I came to realize my most natural way of formally speaking. I found a comfortable middle ground between professionalism and my most relaxed state of being and while rehearsing consistently in front of family and friends I found that I had a confidence within me that I most likely wouldn't have stumbled upon any other way than my practicing as I had.
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Persuasion helps me during my mentorship. Learning how to persuade people is definitely an art I have not yet mastered, but it is needed in everyday in the workplace environment to talk to clients. Persuasion is needed with clients every day to ensure that they either will be persuaded to hire us on their behalf, or be persuaded to pay a higher price, or even just pay in total, clients need to be swung onto our side and for that to happen it is imperative I speak authoritatively and convincingly. I had to write multiple drafts of this one outline for my speech, editing phrases and words to make it more convincing. This is the same thing my mentor does when writing briefs or submitting documents to people in charge of their clients future. Law is a hard set strictly bound piece of wire, but if I've learned anything through mentorship and all of my efforts in the class of persuasion, it's that sometimes wires need to be bent...
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Although the class was only 33 hours, that does not mean I spent only 33 hours working on this component. I spent hours writing and editing all of my speeches, rehearsing, memorizing facts flashcard by flashcard for specific speeches, brainstorming topics and even meeting with my newly made colleagues to study for the final which included a final speech and a final written exam.
APPLIED:
This component really helped me get a better grasp on my senior project. In fact I believe this component is AE worthy, this is why:
I didn't just continue my mentorship and work extra long hours, I continued my mentorship while taking this class, I analyzed the my project to find the holes that need improvement, isolated my problem and found a practical, successful solution. Public speaking has always been a challenge for me even at iPoly, but simply acknowledging the problem is not the answer. I found my own solution by finding and taking this class because I knew it would best suit my needs in the workplace. I have never been more confident while speaking to clients and after many impromptus, I'm comfortable being put on the spot with almost nothing to go on. Learning how to create everything from nothing, was a topic I was unfamiliar with. Confidence must be acquired over time and I'm not trying to say that after one class I am a some type of speaking wizard...but it is through this class that I have acquired the techniques to further enhance my speaking and writing abilities.
For example, in one of the lectures my instructor covered the topic of the communication cycle. Here were part of my notes from taken from that lecture.
APPLIED:
This component really helped me get a better grasp on my senior project. In fact I believe this component is AE worthy, this is why:
I didn't just continue my mentorship and work extra long hours, I continued my mentorship while taking this class, I analyzed the my project to find the holes that need improvement, isolated my problem and found a practical, successful solution. Public speaking has always been a challenge for me even at iPoly, but simply acknowledging the problem is not the answer. I found my own solution by finding and taking this class because I knew it would best suit my needs in the workplace. I have never been more confident while speaking to clients and after many impromptus, I'm comfortable being put on the spot with almost nothing to go on. Learning how to create everything from nothing, was a topic I was unfamiliar with. Confidence must be acquired over time and I'm not trying to say that after one class I am a some type of speaking wizard...but it is through this class that I have acquired the techniques to further enhance my speaking and writing abilities.
For example, in one of the lectures my instructor covered the topic of the communication cycle. Here were part of my notes from taken from that lecture.
One thing I found most important from that one lecture to my senior project was just how little I really knew communicating. I suppose because I am a girl I always assumed I was some kind of master at it, and that communicating my feelings, emotion, thought and expression was always very reflective of myself. I never truly thought of the larger picture which is that no matter who I am talking to, there is an audience. Speaking is an audience centered art which means that if I want to be listened to and actually understood, my speaking needs to be molded and developed into whoever my audience may be. This one little fact has made all the difference in my speaking at my mentorship. I no longer speak to clients as simply "Marissa", but depending to who I am speaking with I could be "Marissa the Friendly," "Marissa the Serious," "Marissa the Heartfelt," "Marissa the MAN"...I need to be able to act as a chameleon in every type of situation which is something I got to experience in my speaking class while portraying a formal speaker one day, a persuasive speaker the next, a Pro Stem Cell advocate one day and an Anti Science speaker the next. Taking on different rolls is something I found that I not only needed to learn, but once I did learn, I realized I was actually quite good at.
I completed that transferable class of 3 Units with a sold "A." I am extremely proud of my dedication to the class, the students, the speeches and most importantly myself. Public speaking is the #1 fear of all Americans, even death comes in as #2. I proved myself to be not so typical in the way that I'm no longer afraid anymore! I take pride in saying I've turned my worst fear, into my biggest asset. I only hope this is reflected in my blog.
I completed that transferable class of 3 Units with a sold "A." I am extremely proud of my dedication to the class, the students, the speeches and most importantly myself. Public speaking is the #1 fear of all Americans, even death comes in as #2. I proved myself to be not so typical in the way that I'm no longer afraid anymore! I take pride in saying I've turned my worst fear, into my biggest asset. I only hope this is reflected in my blog.
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