5 hours down 20 to go....

Running Total: 5 Hours
3:00 pm- 8:00 pm

On December 16th, 2012 I attended an organized event with my mentor Consuelo Martinez  and other "A Better Way" staff. This event took place at the Santa Clara Convention Center, the whole event was a huge gathering of different non profit companies like "A Better Way" to collect toys and gift cards for their clients that are less fortunate. As part of this whole event they had big presentation of motivational speakers, personal stories of overcoming obsticlas, and religious chants, because it was heavily tied in with the christian community. After this presentation we went to our assigned booth, and started organizing these hundred and hundreds of toys layed out in front of us. Once we got all the toys we needed collected, we had to load all of the toys into a rented Uhal. All of that including the presentation and toy drive work took 4 hours which was 3-8 pm. When we arrived back to the office we had to unload all of the toys and organizing/inventorying them as well   That task  I spent an hour helping. Through this experience i had a lot of fun although some parts were stressful with so many people and toys, I had lots of fun with my mentor and her co workers working as a team for such a good cause. I left that day of work really proud of the deed that was  done and that I was able to put my hand out there and help out. This proves that not all counselors are just stuck behind a desk to listen to your problems they are also get our there be more hands on and can make a difference, and that is what is so attractive about this career to me.

Changing My Topic

Today is January 22, 2013 my update today will be about a decision I made weeks back to change my Capstone Project Topic. Because of certain difficulties ive decided to go with my plan B which is Councling. I will be Volunteering/Interning at a non profit organization named "A Better Way" located in San Francisco, CA. What this Organization offers is suprivised visits between parents and their children that are currently under the custody of the state as one example. It also offers counsleing for the children and parents at the facility to talk about issues. What I will be doing is shadowing my mentor obersving her job and experience as a counselor and also participating/working in events for this Non Profit. Although this was not my first choice im really glad im getting to do this, I am really considering the career of a counselor and it will be insterseting what I learn along the way.  

"Fiscal Cliff Respose"

Regarding the "Fiscal Cliff" at the end of 2012 the Democrats and the Republicans have two differenet opions on the matter. The Republicans are for this " Fiscal Cliff" and the Democrats are very much hoping to aviod it. U.S Republicans Lawmakers advocated rasing federal tax revenue by reducing deducations rather than rasing the rates to prevent the Fiscal Cliff. But on the Democatic side they want nothing to do with this "Cliff" and are fighting for higher rates on the upper-class. The president took a trip to a toy factory in Pennsylvania  to support his plan to not higher the prices of tax, specially around the holiday season.

For my research I used Google, and the techniques that I used to get a better result was using key words. Instead of using the almost whole sentence that was given to me to search this topic, I shortened it so that I got more clear and understandable information. During my search I also ran into alot of websites that didnt seem that bad before, but now I can tell they are not as repudable or reliable. So because of this tecnique I can better detect bad info and find the best for my paper. I think that the most important and useful tecnique that I learned was using the right terms when searching, because  it saved me alot of time, and gave me more spefic results.




http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fiscalcliff.asp#axzz2HduKeBVi

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-25/republicans-democrats-disagree-on-taxes-as-fiscal-cliff-looms.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/01/fiscal-cliff-progress_n_2221917.html