Researching what I'll do in University

I have been researching sociology--social work and I have even started to apply for Redeemer College. I am hoping that getting a sociology degree will help me with my people and life skills. I would like to learn to associate with people in a way that shows God's love in all situations and how to handle life in a Christ-like manner. I hope that a Christian education will help me to know how to be a good Christian influence on many needy non-Christians that police associate with.

Meeting with my mentor

I met with my mentor, a Constable and another police Constable a week or two ago and I asked them some questions. A few of the things that i asked and their answers (in short form) are:
1. When you first get the job, what do you usually do?
        -You usually do about six months of desk work, then you get put in a cruiser.
2. What are some of the differences of being a female police officer?
        -There aren't really any differences anymore, unless you count females needing to be home to raise their families more than males. They have slowly changed over time, for example: there can now be two females in a car together when before a female had to be with a male.
3. What should i take in college to raise my chances of becoming a police officer?
        -You should take whatever courses you are interested in. They mainly want to see that you will try your best and accomplish your goals.

They gave me a few papers about applying and training. I will soon post a picture of the training papers on my Photos and Videos page. It mainly says to do a 5-10 minute warmup, a 10 minute workout (half hard, and half easy), a 5 minute cool down, and a 5 minute stretch, equalling a 30 minute workout. I am going to try to do this workout 2-3 times a week.

They also told me about the Winnipeg Police Service Physical Abilities Test (WPS-PAT). This test is designed to have you demonstrate that you have the minimum ability to perform the physical duties that is associated with this occupation by assessing your ability to:

• Attend to a problem quickly.
• Deal with the problem physically.
• Remove the problem.

The test consists of:

• Running 400 metres (1/4 mile) over a six lap course. This includes climbing up and down stairs, jumping over low obstacles.
• Following the six laps the applicant moves to the push/pull station where they will pull and push against 80 lbs of resistance while moving in a controlled half circle. Two controlled falls to the chest (roll over to the front and stand) are completed after each group of three pulls or three pushes. This sequence is repeated twice.
• Following the push/pull station the applicant completes the test by lifting and carrying 80 lbs a distance of 50 feet.
• The WPS-PAT test must be completed within 4 minutes and 15 seconds.
• Applicants must produce an Original Certificate of the WPS-PAT as provided by the contractor for the Winnipeg Police Service.

My Newest Passion

I am learning about being a police officer and blogging about my progress, if you want to know more about my blog look at my About This Blog page.
My mentor is a police constable who is in her 7^th year with the Winnipeg Police Service, and is currently assigned to a position in Recruiting for Human Resources. She will try to give me insight on the topics that I am researching. I have been emailing with her and we are going to be meeting next week so we can talk in person.
My goals and plans for my passion project are posted on My Plans/Goals page.

End of project

We are now done the passion project for school, I have presented my Spanish project and what I learned for my class and I think it went pretty well. My goal in the beginning was to learn enough Spanish so that I could roughly have a conversation. I have practiced a lot but I don't think I can really have a conversation yet, but I can put a few Spanish words into my English conversations. I can also say the alphabet and count to twenty. I learned that to learn a second language you have to make a lot of time to practice, which I didn't always do, but I still practiced quite a bit.
There is a lot of ways of connecting your faith to learning a second language because by learning a second language you can connect better with other people and build community and it gives you more opportunity to share your faith.
Learning Spanish is connected to creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. God created language for peace so that people could communicate together. Fall is when people used language to work together, building the Tower of Babel and doing other acts of rebellion. God put a stop to this by creating language barriers to separate people. Redemption is that it is God's ultimate plan to restore peace. Overcoming language barriers is a way to restore peace.
I hope to learn more Spanish before I go to Mexico in march and I will try to blog about using the Spanish I have learned in Mexico.

Spanish quizzes

Here are some quizzes that made for me to do after I learned the words/phrases. I got %100!

Learning with my mentor

I got together with my mentor Makayla who is also learning Spanish but is way farther along than I am. She has some books for homeschooling yourself to learn Spanish that are very helpful. She photocopied some of the pages from her books and made me do some written tests on the stuff that I learned. We went over welcome and farewell words/phrases and had a few conversations using those. She also corrected some of my pronunciations of lots of my words and how I pronounced the alphabet. She also gave me a cd that came with the books to help learn to pronounce Spanish the words right (you can see a picture of the cd on my pictures/videos page).

Studying Spanish

Learning Spanish takes a lot of practicing to remember all of the different words and to know when you are supposed to say them in a sentence. I am doing well learning Spanish, and I can put together a very rough conversation using both English and Spanish. My dad is also trying to learn some Spanish with me because he is also coming to Mexico with my class in march! It is helpful having someone to quiz and to have quiz you. There isn't much else to tell about because most of my project is studying Spanish.