BostonBlueHen

Life After Grad School

Well hello there... and Happy New Year!

It took me a little while to get around to writing my last blog entry, but here I am. I guess it's good that a few weeks passed since I finished up with school.

Life is good! It's really nice not to have certain books to read each night and papers to work on, tests to study for, etc. Freedom! One of the first things I did after finishing my final semester was to get some girly books to read from the library. No more criminal justice reading (at least for a little while)!

So what have I been doing with all this extra time without my internship, classes, etc? Working! I am still working at my Suffolk job 17.5 hours per week. I have also begun a part-time nanny job for a 5 month old baby girl in a town close to mine. My goal is to save, save, save money. Let me tell you...not being broke is a very good feeling! I was definitely just staying afloat this semester financially. Working unpaid 16 hrs/week definitely didn't help the bank account. However, it was completely worth it.

So, my plan is to continue working these two jobs through August (economy permitting) and then do some traveling come Fall 2009. Since I did graduate school immediately after college, I feel I need to get some traveling out of my system before I begin my career. It's a good time in life for me.. I'm living at home, single, with little responsibilities, my education is completed...time for a little exploring! My hope is to do some traveling throughout South America for a few months. I hope to start in Argentina and maybe volunteer for a month or so, then backpack through some other countries such as Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, perhaps Brazil if I can fit it in. I need to get a bit out of my comfort zone and challenge myself a bit. So that's my game plan for 2009--save, save, save and then travel, travel, travel. Most likely followed by plenty of job applications and job searching. Eek!

Career-wise, I think ultimately I'd like to work for the federal government. I really enjoyed my internship and especially my exposure to the Investigations aspect of criminal justice. Most likely over the next months, I will begin applying to jobs, as from what I hear, sometimes people do not hear back about federal job applications for 6 months to a year. I definitely would like to get a head start on job applications before I travel, if possible. We'll see!

Overall, my experience in graduate school with the Criminal Justice program was very good. I feel pleased with the education I received and the situations I was exposed to through classes along with my internship. On a more personal note, it is really weird to be done with school. I have been going to school for over 15 years non-stop! That's crazy! Probably a good time to try something new.

It was nice to keep a blog and be able to look back upon the whole experience. Sometimes it's easy to forget the really hard times when I had a full course load. I remember feeling like every waking moment was spent reading for class! How nice it is for that to be over. However, I really enjoy being a student and learning new things, and hearing the ideas and opinions of my peers and professors. I suppose I will have to find new and different ways of learning and challenging myself! Or I could always go for another Master. Ha ha!!

Best of luck to anyone who reads my blogs...thanks for tuning in. On to the next chapter of my life... :)

Finals Week

Well, finals have come and gone. I must admit, this semester my finals schedule was easy compared to the previous two semesters when I was full-time.

For my internship, I spent time working on my final paper. It has to be 10-15 pages, and ended up at about 12.5 pages. I had plenty to write about, and found myself deleting unnecessary information in an attempt to not be too wordy! So, on Wednesday morning (Dec 10th) I handed in my internship project to my adviser. It consisted of a cover page, a two page table of each date, hours, and short summary of what I did that day, all in a neat Excel spreadsheet. I also had a list of the goals I wanted to accomplish and if I felt I had accomplished them. Then of course my paper, along with a copy of each e-mail I sent her summarizing each day of my internship.

It felt so good to pass it in! I was very proud of my final project and genuinely happy about the experience I had. I turned my project into my adviser in person, and got the chance to chat with her about my feelings about the internship. She was very pleased that I had such a positive experience. I thanked her very much-mainly because if not for her, I probably would have never tried for this internship! She had told me about it and encouraged me to check it out. I guess things just happen that way sometimes!

As for my internship, I went to their Holiday party on Thursday afternoon. We had lunch at the Fours, and did a Yankee swap. I ended up with a really nice Kahlua set--they all got a kick out of that since I was "the intern." I was sad to say goodbye, but they all said to keep in touch and that even though there are not job openings now, to keep them in mind perhaps for the future. That I will definitely do!

Lastly, I handed in my take home final for class. It consisted of four questions, and our professor wanted a 2-3 page typed response on each question. All in all, once I got cracking, it was pretty easy to write. I handed that in through e-mail on Wednesday afternoon.

I was so hesitant to hit the "send" button because once I did, I knew grad school was over. I was excited, anxious, sad, happy...a big mix of feelings. In a way, even though I knew my future plans (in a sense) I thought "What now?" and felt a little loss of identity because I have been going to school for SO long. I guess now it's time to do something else!

Good news: I got my grades over the past few days. I got an A in my internship! I was very happy and felt that my paper (which was on Bureaucracy in the Federal Government) must have been good! But the real pleasant surprise was my A in my class! I expected a B+ or A-, but got an A! I guess my final was good! So, needless to say, I was very happy with my grades. That leaves me with a 4.0 this semester--didn't expect that! The reason it is even more exciting to me is that I had a 4.0 last semester, and I think with those two high GPAs, I will graduate with some type of distinction. That's very exciting to me!! :)

So, that's my update on finishing up graduate school. Ah, this journey has gone by quickly. But anyways, I'm not ready to say goodbye just yet. I feel that I'll write one more entry summarizing up the whole experience and let you know about my future plans.

So for one more time... until next time...

Last week of classes in grad school!

On Tuesday it was my second to last day at the internship. For the majority of the day, I worked on finishing up my last project at OI. Throughout the day I had several side conversations with different employees about finishing the internship. I also got to meet the new intern who will be taking my place. My last task was given to me by one of the ASACs, to proofread someone's recommendation for promotion. It was interesting to read the promotion letter. I think it was really helpful to read what kinds of things that supervisors pay attention to that earned this individual the recommendation to be promoted.

Friday was my last day at my internship. I spent the first few hours handing out thank you cards, and mainly going through my e-mail inbox since it would be deleted soon after that day. Around 1030 a.m., I went down to the cafeteria with my supervisor and another ASAC and had coffee and talked. They said it was my "de-briefing." We talked about the internship as a whole, the government, what I learned, etc. A group of about 12 employees took me out to lunch at Bertucci's. It was really nice, and I was given a certificate of participation and a nice letter. My supervisor said very nice things about me.The afternoon was spent tying up loose ends and working a bit on my internship paper and table. It was a very informal day all together.

I was very sad to have my last day at OI. I had a wonderful experience and was sad to no longer be a part of the office. I'm very thankful to have the experience I had, and I think it's a very good sign that I was so sad to leave an unpaid internship! It was very nice of everyone to take me out to lunch; we had a very nice time. It was sad saying goodbye to everyone, however I am going to their holiday party on Thursday, so I will see them all again soon!

My last official class of grad school was only about 20 minutes! In my mind I was thinking "Oh my gosh this is my last class in grad school--maybe even in life!" It was funny because the professor basically collected our sixth paper, and handed out the take home final exam to us. It was very anti climatic! So our take home final is comprised of 4 questions, and he wants 2-3 pages written for each question. So along with my 10-15 page paper for the internship, I'm looking at an 8-12 page paper for my take home final. Ahh!!

Compared to being full-time, these two papers are not so bad! I have been chipping away at my internship paper; it's been really easy to write so far. I'll let you know how I'm doing or once the week is over...

Week 13..Thanksgiving break!

This time my entry is pretty short due to Thanksgiving break! This week, I only interned on Tuesday, as my supervisor was nice enough to give me Friday off. And since I have class on Thursdays, it was not held this week due to the holiday.

Quick little snippet of Tuesday:
Tuesday I again spent the day working on the database project for one of the agent's. I continued to weed through the pages and creating an entry with name of company, address and telephone number of each individual insurance company.
 
The project is coming along fine; it will be the last one I work on with OI. I got some help with one of the women from OEI, who is doing detail up in the OI office until the end of December. She is really intelligent with Excel, and knows all sorts of tricks to make things easier. She did some formatting so I could copy & paste from the PDF document into the Excel spreadsheet. It was so helpful!

And that's all for this week.. I spent the rest of the week enjoying my time off! I worked on my big paper due for my internship (10-15 pages), and my final paper due for class (4-5 pages). I also have been working on Thank You notes for people at my internship, and figuring out a little something to get them as a gift. I decided on Hillard's chocolates.. hope it goes over well!

Week 12

On Tuesday, I began a new project for an agent. He had a 51 page list of insurance companies a certain doctor billed, and he needed me to create a spreadsheet with each insurance company billed, along with its address and phone number. Many were repeats, so I had to weed through and create a clear spreadsheet. For the remainder of the day, I went with some agents to the federal sentencing of a registered nurse who stole pain medication from patches and vials on the post-operative floor she worked on at Lawrence General Hospital. The first two hours were the lawyers and judge arguing/debating logistics of sentencing frameworks, etc. She was charged with counts of tampering, obtaining drugs through subterfuge, and false statements. The prosecution and defense argued their final statements. Then a representative from Lawrence General Hospital spoke about the harm it caused their reputation, hospital, staff, etc. Last, the defendant spoke about how sorry she was, her drug addiction, her son's death, and her rehabilitation.  Finally, the judge talked about the offense and how serious penalties were called for. He imposed 54 months in federal prison, 3 year probation post-incarceration, and no monetary fine. It was really interesting to witness this whole process in action... it was sad, interesting, upsetting, unfortunate... definitely an exciting experience as a criminal justice scholar!

On Friday, I worked on the database that I had started Tuesday. At 9:45 a.m. I left with my supervisor, an employee from OEI, and a general investigator to attend a meeting with some private contractors. The meeting went on for about two hours and was basically a sharing of information that would help a potential case that OI will take over. It mainly focused on issues such as in-patient and out-patient status and the large cost differences between the two. Later in the day after we returned from lunch, I spent the rest of the afternoon working on the
 database that I had done some work on earlier that morning.

Thursday, in class, we discussed readings we had done from the book “Invisible Punishment” by Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind. The book was mainly about the consequences of mass imprisonment. The reading was fine…most of the topics were about issues that I have learned and read about before; many other students expressed the same sentiments. Anyways, we had discussion as always.
I’m reaching the end of my degree here, friends…I think I’m about ready to be done! This was my second to last class, so as you can gauge by my brief comments above…a bit of senioritis is kicking in!

(Posted by M.Collins on behalf of M.Becker)

Week 11

This week, I had Tuesday off because of Veteran's Day. Friday was my only day of interning this week. In the morning, my supervisor let me sit in on a conference call with some employees from some private contractors. I spent the remainder of the first half of the day finishing my project for one of the OEI employees. This completed the database I was creating for her.   After lunch, I spent some time catching up on e-mails that had been piling up. They touched upon subjects such as political activities restrictions, statistics of agents (when someone is convicted or fined in a case they worked on), email/networking monitoring. I also spent some time e-mailing my internship coordinator about expectations from the internship and any loose ends I may need to tie up. In search of another project, I asked one of the agents if he needed anything done. He had more surveillance discs that he needed copied, so I spent the remainder of the afternoon making 2 copies of each surveillance disc for him. 

In class on Thursday, for the first time we didn’t have any reading due! It was so nice to not have to read for class for just one week! I almost didn’t know what to do with myself on the train where I normally get a lot of my reading done. How sad! Anyways, in class we talked a lot about the death penalty. My professor talked to us about the many death penalty types over the years-burying alive, stoning, flogging, the Guillotine, electric chair, etc. It was disturbing, yet also interesting. We discussed issues such as incapacitation and deterrence, the debate on fairness relating to class, gender and race (relating to application of the death penalty), and retribution (Lex talionis- an eye for an eye). We then watched a movie on the death penalty, which was upsetting and again interesting. The movie was longer than expected, so we didn’t get much of a chance to discuss it in class.

Week 10

On Tuesday, first and foremost, I voted! I went in a little late to my internship. Again, I spent the majority of the day working on the database. However, I did get to attend a meeting along with my supervisor. It was headed by the former SAC (Special Agent in Charge) and 2 of his business partners. I attended along with the current SAC and 3 out of the 4 ASACS (Assistant Special Agents in Charge). They discussed their business plan to bid for the private contractor spot of investigating Medicare and Medicaid Fraud. I felt really lucky to sit in on it since it was clearly an important meeting.

 

This week, my schedule was a little different, so I interned again on Thursday. I spent the entire day with some of the other agents and employees at Health Care Fraud Training. This was hosted by the FBI's Boston Office. It was organized by the Health Care Fraud Unit (HCFU) in D.C. The seminar mainly focused on Medical Transportation Fraud and Internet Pharmacy Fraud. It included presentations by agents in the FBI, Assistant U.S. Attorneys and someone from the Department of Justice.

I was really excited to be attending this training. I feel that it's a really great opportunity that I get to be involved, and I really enjoy being part of it. There were about 5 different speakers all together, and it was interesting to hear from many different professionals concerning these areas of white collar crime. There are so many different agencies and divisions within the government! Overall, it was a really interesting day and I was really excited to be included in it.

 

Class this Thursday was pretty interesting. This week, we were discussing Don’t Kill in Our Names by Rachel King. The whole book was about family members of murder victims speaking out against the death penalty. Each family gave the whole story of the victim’s death, and their whole healing and forgiveness process. Much of the class felt there was too much focus on religion in the book, and that it took away from the author's overall message. In class, it sparked lots of interesting discussion on the death penalty, brutality, punishment, forgiveness, juveniles, and victims. Definitely a very interesting class discussion!

Week 9!

On Tuesday I spent the first half of the day at my internship on a new project for an agent. Basically he had surveillance DVDs, and needed me to make 2 copies of each DVD, and label each disc. It was an easy task that took about half of the day. The second part of the day I looked around for a project, and was given something from a woman who works with OEI, Office of Evaluations and Inspections. She is only in the OIG office for a few months or so, working on a specific project. She had me work on an Excel spreadsheet. I used the original and created a new one identifying each date, how many people were serviced that day, their HIC numbers (similar to SSNs), names of patients, and how many people's services were allowed/paid for by Medicare.  I started on this project, but I think it may take me a while to complete, however I may be able to complete it on Friday. I like that people are using me now to help them with their projects; I like to stay busy and be involved with the agents.

Friday I spent the entire day working on the database project for the woman from OEI. I continued to sift through the database and narrow it down to the necessary information that she needs.

 

Class on Thursday was good...We read a short excerpt called "Beyond Retribution." We discussed restorative justice concepts, about holding offenders accountable and repairing harm done by crimes. We watched a video on Victim-Offender Mediation and discussed it afterward!!

Week 8

On Tuesday,  I began a new project for one of the agent's in the office. I spent the entire day working on this project. It was concerning certain regulation issues with doctors.  I basically had to go through the piles of paperwork and identify Medicare patients, look at their paperwork to see if they received services, and if so, photo copy the progress notes from those dates, and identify the dates and signatures, and create a folder for each patient.

               On Thursday, I resumed my project where I had left off. I met with the agent who assigned it to me, and we talked about the project and my progress. Later on, the other agent who was involved with it came in and we went over some of my questions concerning the case and organizational questions. I worked on the project throughout the day, and finished it in the afternoon. In the late afternoon, I spent some time talking about federal employment with a recent college graduate, a Customs Inspector, and also two of the agents in the office.

               The afternoon was actually really pleasant because my supervisor wanted me and an agent to speak  to this girl who had just graduated from college (actually a semester after me) who was interested in federal employment. We kind of sat around chatting about different federal websites, different types of federal jobs, advice on how to apply, etc. It was really beneficial for me! It was really helpful and I enjoyed being part of the conversation. As I left my supervisor thanked me and said I've been working really hard and doing a good job. I was so happy for that feedback from him! I left my internship that day feeling really happy to be able to have all this exposure to federal employment and proud of the internship I have and what I've been doing and learning. It was a very good day!

               Class was good on Thursday! We discussed a book that I had previously read, Last Chance in Texas, by John Hubner. It was about a rehabilitative group, the Capital Offenders Group, in Texas. This group was used on the "worst of the worst" juvenile offenders in Texas. It is a really interesting book, but our class was pretty quiet that night, so it wasn't the best discussion we've ever had. I'm slightly at a loss of what to write for my paper this week, but hopefully it will develop over the week!

Week Seven

This week, I only interned on Tuesday since I was going down to Delaware for homecoming weekend Friday-Sunday.  Tuesday I spent the first few hours working on my database entry aiming to finish it. Around 11 am an agent came in telling me about a database project he had for me that was a high priority. It took precedence over the ongoing project I've been working on. I worked on that until about 3 PM, and finished it. I worked and finished the ongoing database project I had until work ended!

 I was so determined to finish my project, especially since I wouldn't be in on Friday. When I was given the other project, I was at first thinking "No!!" because I am very much someone who likes to complete one project and begin another. But of course I was enthusiastic and understood that a project of high priority is the priority! Luckily, the project was pretty simple, just some more database work, not data entry. This project was 3 different spreadsheets for 3 different doctors. I had to go through each one to delete repeat patient names and make a simple list of patients for each doctor. Each database had several hundred to a few thousand entries. It just took some sorting and deleting to simplify the lists.

I was happy to get that project done, and to be able to finish my big project! I worked really hard all day, and diligently so I could complete everything successfully and in time. My supervisor seemed happy with me and noticed how hard I was working and how much I accomplished that day! It also made me think how that is how work goes sometimes: just when you're about to complete a project, another more important is assigned to you and you must be flexible! Sometimes we must juggle more than one project at a time. It was a good professional experience for me.

Class on Thursday was fine. We discussed an excerpt from "Angry Young Men" by Aaron Kipnis. The author was a former gang member who had spent a lot of his childhood and adolescence in foster care and institutions. The book mainly focused on how our communities could better deal with "angry young men" rather than incarcerating them. We discussed the reading in class as usual. Our professor wasn't requiring us to write a paper on this reading, which was great since I had a busy weekend ahead!