Academics

Hello!

This past August and September, I have focused on building the outline of my Odyssey Project and making as many connections as I could. Beginning this summer, I went to a family reunion in Oklahoma. There, I met my cousin Miranda Bruce for the first time, who has a PhD and works in cybercrime in Australia. She got me in contact with Christopher Lamb, a recently retired Special Agent who I connected with throughout August. I had a phone conversation with him and expressed my plans for my Odyssey Project and my career, and he was able to share his story with me as well as advice for me moving forward. The most fascinating thing I learned from him was his idea for how I could start my journey in the FBI. From what I had told him, he believed that becoming a Victim Specialist would be a good path to consider, and this idea got me interested in the victim-focused side of my project. As I researched the framework of the job, I saw what a big and underrated role Victim Specialists play in helping survivors work through their trauma and the aftermath of violent crime. So in August, I added some plans for researching the impact victims have on how we approach criminal patterns. As well as this, Mr. Lamb also assisted in getting me in contact with Tobias Long, a current Supervisory Special Agent at the Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Virginia. I had a phone call with him to discuss more contact options and the best ways to conduct applicable research on my topic. Talking with Mr. Long and Mr. Lamb gave me a lot of confidence in reaching out to contacts, because they showed me a kindness and willingness to help that I hadn’t expected. Their passion and advice gave me newfound excitement about my project and how I was spending my time. 

Since these helpful conversations in August, I spent my time in September looking for research resources and taking notes on a variety of topics related to criminal psychology. I am working to create a general base of research to gain a basic level of understanding in order to focus my project later. Creating the Odyssey Scholar’s elevator pitches in early September helped with this immensely. I spent about three weeks working on a 3 minute pitch about my project, and working to fit what I had to say into that time was a big task, and I would say it has been my biggest challenge so far this year. I have so many interests and goals I would love to accomplish in raising awareness about the creation of violent criminals, as well as concern for the voices of victims, and the elevator pitch was the first time this year I had to put that into words. I redid the pitch various times, and felt very stressed about demonstrating my project well to my family. In the end, I came through with a pitch that accurately expressed my sympathy, passion, and dedication to criminal psychology. Now, in late September, I am working on my annotated bibliography– finding scholarly sources and books and taking endless notes on how they may support my theories on criminal development. 

Hi again!

The focus of this October has been research. I have spent hours reading dissertations, articles, and novels on criminal motivation and creating my annotated bibliography. I read a fascinating article written by Kenji Abe titled “Eight Types of Childhood Environments that Actually Produced Serial Killers Based on the Information in Lay Literature and on the Internet.”The most compelling note I gathered from this resource was about the “categories” from childhood that were common themes within violent criminals’ experiences. The 8 types of environmental causes of serial killers found in this study are stress from an anger-prone/overbearing mother, denial of identity/sexuality, mixture of identity, inference, and domination problems, abuse/home terrorization by father, hostility from both parents, a bully at school, abuse at an orphanage, deprivation of basic care at birth, adoption, and neglect with friends. Each article I have been reading is very similar to the others- my research right now is focused on building my general knowledge base without diving into specifics yet. I’ve taken extensive notes on each source and now that I know more general information, I have been able to start searching for sources more targeted toward individual essay topics. Some of these include novels I found at the beginning of the month.

On October 2nd, we went to the UNM Libraries and I was able to find a variety of books within their database to explore further. I ended up getting four new novels, which are featured at the bottom of this blog. They are more generally focused on criminal data and motivation as a whole, rather than any one topic I plan on researching. But I am thrilled to read them. I also reached out to two Special Agents, one located within the Albuquerque area and one based in Washington, as well as a homicide detective, in order to create new connections for expert input and interviews. I am actively planning my community observation I will be doing next month and setting up interviews to conduct with Gayani DeSilva and Christopher Lamb.

Hi!

This past November, I used my time to bring my annotated bibliography two annotations away from completion, as well as preparing for and planning interviews. I had two interviews tentatively scheduled for the month of November, but sickness and unavailability made it difficult to make those interviews happen. I wrote interview questions, featured below, and sent these to my interviewees to prepare for our conversations. Those interviews will be rescheduled for the upcoming month. My last two annotations involve reading and analyzing two more books, American Evil by Dr. Eric Cullen and Killer Psychopaths by Paul Roland.

My favorite source that I read this November was Through the Eyes of Serial Killers: Interviews with Seven Murderers by Nadia Fezzani. Fezzani uses data and dialogue from personal interviews with a multitude of violent killers to express the sociological factors throughout the serial killers’ lives that led to their criminal beliefs and aggressions. Instead of just analyzing the biological and physical evidence of serial killings, Fezzani dives into the personal perspectives, stories, backgrounds, and risks of serial killers. This resource adds psychological, sociological, and personal outlooks and data to my research and knowledge base.

This semester in Odyssey was an immersive experience full of research, analysis, and project outlining. I spent each month diving into sources that contributed to a well-rounded knowledge base for my project and added to my understanding of the aspects of criminal psychology that I had not planned to explore very deeply. This included the biological factors and predispositions that have been found present in the brain activity of violent criminals, but do not have the consistency to be understood as root causes. Although I had not planned to explore that side of criminal motivation in very much depth, I feel better prepared to approach the physiological and psychological aspects now knowing about factors such as damaged amygdala, dysfunctional serotonin and dopamine production, and chromosomal abnormalities such as the XXY or XYY chromosomes, and the MAOA-L genotype. These factors appear in enough cases to signify some damage to the processing and function of an individual's brain, which means acknowledgement of them is important in considering the full influence that it took for an individual to reach a state of mind that justifies violence.

Despite the presence of such biological information within my sources, the main takeaways I got were of the environmental factors that impacted serial killers’ upbringing, which is the gateway into compiling my own research summary for my Odyssey product. I read 5 books and 5 scholarly articles for my Annotated Bibliography and am working on summarizing my findings in my Literature Review. This November, I attempted to complete two interviews and my Community Observation, but these plans fell through due to sickness and unavailability. At first, I hoped for my Community Observation to be either a tour or shadowing with an agent at the Albuquerque Field Office, but through 3 different sources I discovered that their only Outreach option for a high schooler was the Teen Academy in the summer. After this realization, I changed my plan to the possibility of attending a lecture at UNM or visiting the Washington Field Office during an upcoming visit to my Aunt and Uncle’s house. Sadly, the UNM idea ran out of time and I got no follow up after contacting the Washington Field Office. Now, I am seeing if there are any museums I could visit within New Mexico like the Albuquerque Police Department Museum or if I could use Maddy and her dad as contacts to achieve my observation.

Along with my research, I have also learned a lot about myself and the requirements of taking on a project like the Odyssey Program throughout this semester. I have found the guidelines and processes within the Program to be ones that I am very compatible with, and I have found it easy to stay ahead of the game and dedicate whatever time necessary to my assignments. Having a detailed, demanding course like Odyssey has provided me with a great challenge, but the fact that I get to build my project and explore a passion of mine changes my outlook greatly to appreciate the hard work. One of my goals in signing up for Odyssey was to put myself within the field of criminal psychology to see if it was an area I could explore in my career. I have been able to begin understanding the research, outreach, and expertise required to succeed in this field, and use class time within my schooling to be productive beyond high school.

The assignment that proved most difficult for me was conducting my two interviews. Although the reasons I had to cancel were because of sickness, and it has been very difficult to plan around my interviewees schedules, I felt as if some fear was the main thing holding me back. Making phone calls and reaching out to people is something that intimidated me a lot but I also was very excited to gain experience doing it. However, when it came down to it, it felt like the universe was working against me in accomplishing these interviews, whether by me not feeling well enough or by lack of response or clarity in my correspondence with my sources. But after Thanksgiving break, I’ve returned with a new perspective: I have accomplished everything I have wanted to so far into the program on time and to the best of my ability, and so I am not going to let a flu or an awkward email get in my way of making sure I do that with every assignment. I have two weeks left, so there is nothing stopping me from making everything happen this semester that sets me up for success when we return in January. But I must say, no matter how extroverted I thought I was, the prospect of calling a homicide detective turns a lot of my confidence into nerves, and I have made it a new goal to work on that by the end of my two year program.

Another challenge I encountered this semester was the difficulty in finding research on multiple of my topics and their correlation with criminal behavior. As expected, the connection between childhood/parental trauma and violent tendencies is obvious and very present in research and media.

However, research on my other topics, like education and astrology, is scarce. I hope to be able to spend more time searching for sources that cover these topics next semester as I begin to plan and write my essays.

All in all, it has been a productive semester full of learning and challenges. The challenges I have left to resolve are the interviews and my community observation. Other than that, I have worked through mountains of reading, research, and analysis and discovered my strengths in time management and planning. I am excited to have the holiday break to read more books on criminal behavior and come back for semester two of four to keep this project going.

Talk to you then!

Happy New Year! 

This January, my goal was to write a rough draft of an entire essay about education and schooling. That did not happen. :) I reached out to a contact that my mom set me up with who works in correctional health in California, with a valuable focus on adolescents. I cannot wait to talk with her as her experience will cover many, if not all, of my topics. I emailed her and sent her interview questions to review, but I am awaiting a response to set up an official interview time. This delay is why I decided to wait to write my essay, but instead, I spent my time reading other essays on education and schooling and their relationship with violent criminals. I also spent a couple class periods creating some data charts over 28 famous killers. The charts included: Highest education level, military experience, marital status at arrest, home state, parental situation, reported abuse, and children. 3 examples can be found below. 

In February I hope to conduct the interview with Ms. DeSilva, as well as begin a conversation with Ms. Duranceaux, a psychologist at the APD. Then I believe I could start the outlines for a multitude of essays. Originally, I wanted to be completing full drafts of my essays. I have now changed my mind and plan to write bullet pointed outlines of all of my essays. 

Talk to you soon!