I'm still in shock. It felt like such a big step. I've been waiting for this day since I graduated in 2017 with my undergraduate degree. Actually, before I graduated. And today, my acceptance email came. I'm an admitted grad student. Not quite enrolled yet, but still!
So, I'm sure you can tell from perusing my site here that my degree will be in criminal justice. If you've been following me for a while I know that might shock you, too.
I haven't exactly been quiet about it, but I haven't been outspoken yet either about my experiences with the criminal justice system. In 2020, my older brother died while being detained and it's been a complicated and messy process that I wish I could say was finished.
That event was life-changing in every facet of my life. I was already working on my Jack Johnson series, but now I wanted this series to do so much more. To be so much more. A catalyst for change. I remember in my undergrad days sharing a chapter from my novella THE ONE. A classmate said a particular scene wasn't realistic because people don't act that way. But it was based verbatim on a scene I witnessed. That showed me the power of fiction to open up a dialogue on real-life problems.
I'm hoping that with a degree in criminal justice, I can use my Jack Johnson series to show both the flaws in our current criminal justice system and how those flaws could be changed. How the system could operate.
I'm not ready yet to open up more about my experiences with my brother's story, but I hope to one day be able to share what I and my family have experienced. I know our stories are not anomalies, and that is so heartbreaking.
That's a powerful driving force, this heartbreak. It shouldn't have happened to us, and I'd like to prevent it from happening to more individuals in custody and their families.
Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my page and read my posts. I'll be posting a little bit here and there until January, but January is when the fiction serialization will begin and when I'll start giving updates on my classes.
Alexandria