A Short Introduction

Hello everybody! I just want to start by saying how excited I am to be realizing the dream I only recently realized I have.

When I graduated from high school in 2005 I knew I wanted to work on a global scale but I had no idea what it was I wanted to do. So I joined the military, I figured they were pretty good at telling you what to do. I was taught Pashto, the language spoken in the tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. After leaving the Air Force I went to Afghanistan in 2009 and 2011 to use my language skills on a project that strives to improve voice recognition software. While in Afghanistan I started to use Pashto in a way I never could in the military, I conducted recorded interviews. Being able to speak to the everyday citizens of a country in the throes of war, poverty, and corruption taught me something about what the majority of news media either ignored, didn't know, or failed to report. I found that I had the desire to share with the rest of the world what I could learn by talking to people.

In a global society journalism is responsible for making us all complete citizens of the developing global community. We need to strive to convert the emotions of humanity into something that can be understood by all. If journalism is successful it will enable a new brand of broad reaching democracy independent of any one nation's constitution or decree. If journalism is unsuccessful there is no end to the ways humanity will be harmed by unchecked power on a global scale.

I am taking this class to begin my contribution to our global society. I hope to learn the essentials of fact checking and general procedures for journalists. There are many attributes of a good journalist and I want to learn how to adopt all of them.

I am also the mother of a 6 year old boy I am homeschooling and a beautiful 1 year old baby girl.

Thank you and good luck to all of you in our studies!