Criminal Justice Narrative

As I walked towards the bus, I excitedly played with my plushy mallet; unknowingly that squishy mallet would be my most hated possession soon. I did not want to leave Arizona State University. There was no way that I wanted to go back to my boring life as a seventh grader after learning so much about the criminal justice system at the Arizona State University field trip, but I had to get on the bus back home. Before the bus started its commute back home my teacher stood up to speak.
“I have some great news kids! Since all of you seem very enthusiastic about learning about the criminal justice system, I will be starting a ‘Teen’s Court’ at school” said Miss May. I was beating my plushy mallet against the seat in front of me as were all my other classmates in excitement. We had no idea what “Teen’s Court” fully meant but we were just enthralled by the mention of learning more about the criminal justice system.
The following week my teacher, Ms.
May, had put up the sign up sheet for who wanted to participate in “Teen’s Court”. I blasted through the crowd and managed to be the second one to sign up. Signing up meant committing to getting up earlier than usual because it was a before school activity. However, I did not mind as I was set on pursuing my dream career as a lawyer. The next day was the introduction meeting where Ms. May and Ms. Hoffman explained what “Teen’s Court” was and what we would be doing. There were a couple of roles we could be placed in there was the jury, lawyers, prosecutors, and the judge. Essentially what we had to do was when a kid got a suspension they would come to “Teen’s Court” and they would plead their case to us and the jury would decide if they were innocent or
not. During our first real “court case”, I was placed in the jury; which was fine because it was the first time and I wanted to see how things would work for lawyers. It was fun, the kids on the brink of suspension would tell us what happened and give their side of the story and plead innocent. But the jury had the last say in if they were free to go or not. At first it was cool but then after a couple of weeks of not moving out of the jury box, I got frustrated. At this point “Teen’s Court” was ridiculous. We made the kids do so much work, we made them write essays to the teacher making them apologize or make them do community service and sometimes they still received suspension after doing that. After over a month of being stuck in the jury box, I stopped going. I got mad at the fact that I was never the lawyer, I wanted to be a lawyer that's literally the only reason I was there; I wanted to see if I'd be good at it or not. I had to get up like super early to go to "court" just to sit there and listen, I wanted to be apart of the action and they would never ask for my opinion I literally just sat there. Later on the teacher asked to talk to me and she said “Martha, why have you not been showing up anymore?” “I stopped going because I never do anything and you just have me sit there so there's no point of me going” I responded. Ms. May said, “I’ll give you a chance to be a lawyer if you come back.” However, I said that it was fine and I just didn't want to do that anymore and she let me off the hook. That day I realized that I did not want to be a lawyer anymore. Shortly after that a Physician’s Assistant came in to talk to the class and that is when I knew I wanted to be a Physician's Assistant. I guess it is true that everything happens for a reason.