So during my “break” I decided to build a blanket castle, I’ve been sleeping in it for almost a week now and it’s honestly been very relaxing.

Does this count as a corona virus meme?? I don’t truly know but I love it as a break between all the memes I saw last week. I definitely enjoyed the Jaws shark eating pizza.

I’m late to this, but my cat decided to surprise me with kittens last week. She is being an amazing mom and I didn’t imagine I would be a grandma by age 18. I love them all and seeing them grow even for just a few days has made life a little easier.

I have been into anything real crime or law related since I could remember. Because of this I have recently become investing in a podcast titled “Serial”. Season One is about Adnan Syed, a boy who was convicted for murdering his ex girlfriend, Hae Lee. Sarah Koenig was asked to look at the case and eventually dug into it after hearing so much about it. She goes about the episodes of the podcast drawing listeners further into the story unfolding. Actual recordings from interviews she has done are played during the episodes to give more depth and feeling to the people tied up in the case.

Episode 1 dives into what happened the day that Hae got murdered, including an interview from Jay, Adnan’s close friend, about his side of the story. He explained how he knew Adnan was going to kill Hae, but yet he never spoke up about it to try and stop him, just thinking that his friend was “joking”. I honestly think Jay should be tried for accomplice to murder after his rendition of what happened and he, himself saying, helped Adnan bury the body in the park.

Many things in this case stick out to me, my love for forensics and true crime influencing how I take in the story. I no longer look at it as just a story to listen to, but to delve into and try to figure out the truth myself with what I learned from my high school forensics class. I am no where near the expert level as people in the GBI, but still love the challenge of fitting all the puzzle pieces together until the truth emerges.

This is Piper, she showed up one day at my mom’s house and stuck around. After a while she started to come inside and now she is fully apart of our family. She loves to lay on someone’s chest and snuggle into them. She is super adorable with her affection and loves a good chin scratch.

It snowed at my house over the weekend, it was very nice to see. I love snow a lot and I spent all the time I could out in it. I took many photos and savored it the best I could.

This week I read about student press laws. I learned about the problems to do with laws regarding what students can and cannot write about and publish in a school setting. Both the article and podcast I looked into gave me insight as to what students are being oppressed with a ruling made in 1988 mentioned in both New Voices 2020 preview and Student Press Freedom Day — Jan. 29, 2020.

In the podcast it went into depth about a movement called New Voices that wishes to undo the damage done in the 1988 Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier ruling. Currently 14 states have switched to the New Voices legislation and it seems that in 2020 that number will grow. The article used the same 1988 ruling to show what legislation terms were put into practice and how Student Press Freedom Day could help push the New Voices agenda into better lighting.

I never realized how oppressed student journalists are until I read in depth about it and what actions are being done to give them more freedom in writing about what they are passionate about.

The article If a tweet worked once, send it again — and other lessons from The New York Times’ social media desk talks about how The New York Times uses Twitter to relay information to a bigger audience. Reliable journalists are retweeted by the staff managing the Times Twitter account. At one time using automated tweets, lessons have been learned that it is not always as reliable as if editors were present to monitor the Twitter timeline. Changes were made over time to highlight what strategies work best for enticing readers. Learning what time things were tweeted also helped to configure how big of an audience is being reached, now tweets are being sent out sometimes repetitively throughout a certain period of time to reach the most people.

I read the article High Schools to TikTok: We’re Catching Feelings, and have learned just how big the TikTok community is. I myself am not apart of it and have never considered it. Clubs have started to pop up around the country that revolve around the app. Schools and teachers have even started to use the app to help promote better learning, team work and awareness for our marks left in social media.

This is Alex, one of my many beloved dogs. Recently he has started to take epilepsy medication to combat the horrible seizures he has. I’ve started to cherish the time I have with him as we never know when he’ll have his last episode and never get better. He’s a big goofy love bug who will chase you down if you have food or a tennis ball. He is so quirky and sometimes doesn’t know how to work his lanky limps in tandem. He loves a good neck and ear scratch and loves to lean up against me when he wants attention, even to the point of almost knocking me over. I love this doofus a lot.

I took this photo on my flight to Houston back in May of 2019. I was lucky enough to capture some stunning images of the setting sun, this one definitely taking the top spot. Seeing clouds so up close brought me a new meaning of perspective. Them silently floating by reminded me to slow down and actually look at the magnificent world around me.