Senior Projects

Everything involving gamemaker studio 2.5 and the extentions used to un the Sonic Worlds engine seem to be functioning fine with one notable exception. As of time of writing, I cannot find the seperate “Bouton CS” extention that will allow me to continue into the actuall game design. Anyone here know how to fix this? Its the only think keeping me from moving on to the next step.

For the first half of the week I have gotten to sit on one review hearing for a delinquency case. It was a positive hearing because the juvenile was doing all the things required of him by the court. The judge said if he continued to do all of his requirements he would be released from supervision by there next review hearing! I also got to see my first two adoption cases. It was very interesting to see some of the process for an adoption case and to watch the child bang the gavel in the judges chair once they were officially adopted. Robyn has continued to explain the process of authorizing and working on care and protection cases, TPR’s, and a little bit of delinquency cases. The reason it is only a little bit of delinquency is because Robyn specializes in care and protection and TPR cases as a Juvenile Office Attorney, but the cases can cross over and can have similar process’s. To authorize a care and protection referral it has to be filed into JIS, which is where the referral is created into a case and is given a case number. JIS is an internal court system that is used and viewed only by employees of the court. As I continue to shadow I am learning more about different case scenarios and how every process for a case looks a little different.

For the first three weeks of my project I’m working at Continuum Education and Therapy. They do education and therapy for young children with learning disabilities and autism. On the first day, they were having a staff training day so they didn’t have any students there. One of the parents couldn’t find a babysitter so continuum offered to babysit from 1-4 for them. I helped one other person hang out with the two brothers. I spent the afternoon asking and answering lots of questions and playing make-believe with the younger boy. Yesterday, I shadowed some of the behavioral therapists there as they were running class for their group of kids. I found it fascinating to watch the therapists interact with the kids. The most important skill when doing this job is having patience. Repetition of words and tasks is key to help the kids remember them. One girl that was there is deaf and autistic and so the therapists were spending a lot of time using sign language to help reinforce certain concepts to her. Sign language is important with the other kids too because many of them struggle with speech. After spending just one afternoon around them, I can remember a lot of the signs that they used. Overall I’ve gotten a better understanding of what goes on here and I’ve learned a lot about child development and behavior development. Despite spending most of the day watching, it’s fascinating and exciting to be here.

Well, this is new. To be honest, I still dont know a bunch on how this stuff works as of time of writing. However, I am much closer to understanding now. Throuought the first week, my goal was to learn the basics of the engines I could work in between Unity and Clickteam Fusion 2.5. I was then to make a choise between the two on which one I was to use. In the end, I chose Clickteam, as that seems to require less coding. For the game I wish to achieve, I needed extensions to utilize the open source Sonic Worlds Engine. However, that is a tale for another week. As for this first week, I spend the first half doing the Clickteam Fusion built in tutorials, then spent the second half doing the Unity built in tutorials.

Today I am in Alton, IL. I was tasked with getting everybody’s computer and changing all the storage to one drive from iCloud. It is fairly simple, however, there are at least 30 computers to do. overall a pretty chill day.

On Saturday I had my second show at The Sheldon. It was a Dean Martin tribute. A tribute is when someone sings songs all from one particular artist or band usually from and different time period. It was a rental, meaning no one was booked for the show. Someone rented the venue out. That night I ordered and got dinner for some of the staff and I. As well as scanning tickets and ushering. Overall it was a successful first week!

For Friday I got into the office and discussed a little bit more what I learned the day before with Robyn. She explained to me in more depth about the cases we observed in court the day before. I forgot to mention on Thursday she was given five more cases to work on, three of them were child protections cases and the other two were TPR’s. She worked on a few of those cases while I observed and asked questions about her process. She then took me down to intake, which is where the cases first come in and get vetted to decide if they are worth pursuing (meaning if they have enough evidence) or not. I got to talk to the one of the workers who decides if the case is worth pursuing. She shared with me her own process and showed me how there are so many steps before the cases ever gets to the attorneys. When a case comes in and the officer has not given enough detail or evidence she will speak with him and ask them to go more in depth in order for this case to be pursued. I learned a lot from her and Robyn as we all talked and they explained different case scenarios and answered any and all my questions. For next week I am looking forward to learning more about how to use evidence to strengthen cases.

On Friday I got to work from home. Since I didn’t have to commute, I was able to sleep in. I started work at 8:30 and finished around 2. I was working on creating a newsletter for the company. Since Covid, they stopped the newsletter and asked me to build on that contained health news, recipes, fitness, and social news like where to go for the weekend and such.

For the first three weeks of my senior projects I am working with Robyn Kirk who is a juvenile attorney at St. Louis City Family Court. I started my senior projects on Thursday because Robyn switched from working with the Children’s Division to the Juvenile Office. She gave me four different books to look into before my first day. I finished one of the books called “Hey, Kiddo” by Jarrett J. Krosoczka about a child who’s mother was a heroin addict. He talked about his struggles and the importance of healing and sharing them. I am now reading “Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew” by Sherrie Eldridge.
For the first half of the day on Thursday I got the opportunity to sit in on delinquency and child protection cases in court and meet some of Robyn’s co-workers. There was so much information being said during court and it was really eye opening and fascinating to see the wide ranges of different cases. For the second half of the day Robyn took me through her process of looking at one of her TPR (terminate parental rights) cases. From Thursday I think the most important thing I have learned so far is that in child protection cases they aren’t necessarily trying to take the child away from their parents, but instead are trying to come up with a reunification plan to reunite the family. If the reunification plan fails they then will look into terminating the parents rights. I am looking forward to the next two weeks with Robyn and learning more about the legal side of child protection.