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Showing posts with the label Miami-Dade College

College Daze: 'Students witness more than bookings' (Catalyst, November 27, 1985)

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Image by  Angela Yuriko Smith  from  Pixabay   Students witness more than bookings Alex Diaz-Granados Copy Editor Miami Vice it isn't, but criminal justice majors can actually ride in a Metro-Dade patrol car and observe officers as they follow their daily routine. These students will fill out evaluation reports, evaluating what they've seen and turn them in to their professors. Then the reports will be discussed in class. Not only do these student evaluators gain a first-hand look at police work, but they also receive $7 an hour. "Most people get their ideas of what law enforcement officers' work is supposedly like from such television shows as Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice, " said criminal justice professor Ron Stearns. He said people see real police officers when the media get hold of something they did wrong or a heroic act. "An average police officer's day is filled with unexciting duties that the cops on Miami Vice wou

A Look Back at 1987: 'About Time: He Just Met a Girl Named Maria'

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My sig box from Miami-Dade Community College, South Campus' student paper, circa 1987  When I was a journalism student at Miami-Dade Community College’s South (now Kendall) Campus, I worked on the campus student newspaper from 1985 to 1989. I started out as a Staff Writer and finished my “tour of duty” as Managing Editor. As a result of this unusually long stint, I had the opportunity to write for every section of the paper: News, Opinions, Diversions, Features, and even Sports. I was even the campus paper’s first foreign correspondent when I participated in the College Consortium for International Studies’ Semester in Spain – Seville program in the Fall Term of the 1988-89. One of my favorite assignments was as a contributor for an experimental Features section that we ran during the Winter Term of the ’86-87 academic year. It was called About Time. In it, we published pieces about different personal experiences, ranging from humorous to bathetic topics based on events

A Look Back at 1986: 'Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home' - A College Student's Review

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Author's Note: This review first appeared in an issue of Catalyst, Miami-Dade Community College, South Campus' student newspaper in  November of 1986.  Star Trek IV - a treat you will enjoy this holiday season Alex Diaz-Granados Copy Editor Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, actor-director Leonard Nimoy's second entry in the continuing saga of Admiral Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the crew, is the best film of the series to date. It's a holiday present sure to please. The Voyage Home takes up the story three months after the rescue of Spock from the doomed Genesis planet. Self-exiled on Vulcan with his officers, Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) has saved his friend, but at great cost - his son is dead, his beloved Enterprise destroyed and his career is in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the Klingons are demanding the Federation Council extradite Kirk for his "crimes against galactic peace,"(if stopping a Klingon plot to take Genesis can be called

Save Me the Aisle Seat: A Brief Excerpt

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Movies have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.   Some of my earliest childhood memories center on little snippets of black-and-white movies I glimpsed while my parents watched television in the Florida room of our second Miami home; they are vague because I was less than two years old and my dad was still alive, but sometimes I still see, in my mind’s eye, little fragments of old John Wayne Westerns and war movies which my father had enjoyed. It’s no exaggeration when I say that my childhood relationship with the movies was one of the key influences during my formative years.   Because I had very few father figures beyond my maternal grandfather and several uncles before I entered junior high, I tended to mimic certain traits of actors and movie characters I admired.  I wanted to be as brave as John Wayne’s many cowboys and military heroes, as idealistic as Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker, as dashing-and-daring as Errol Flynn and Clark Gable, and as funny as Stev

Some Advice for New College Journalism Students

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When I started taking journalism courses at a local college in the mid-1980s, I was under the impression that I was well-prepared to be a college-level writer for the campus’ student newspaper.  I had studied the basics of news writing, reporting, editing, and page makeup for two years in high school, and I had been a section editor during my sophomore and senior years.  I even earned A’s consistently in my journalism courses. So imagine my surprise, two years after I had graduated from high school, when I stepped into my JOU 1100 classroom for the first time and felt as though I had actually studied just enough to get by in class but had much more to learn. It’s possible that I felt that way because I had added Prof. Townsend’s class two days into the Fall term (my Pell Grant had just been approved and I needed to become a full-time student, so I added Basic Reporting and Introduction to Radio and Television to my schedule) and was nervous.  Perhaps I was keenly aware that do

Dispatches From Spain: In Spain, soccer is a wild, no-holds barred contest

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In Spain, soccer is a wild, no-holds barred contest January 26, 1989 Alex Diaz-Granados Columnist SEVILLE, Spain (CCIS Program) When one is in Spain, one must do as the Spaniards do, or so we've been told by the College Consortium for International Studies Center staff when we ask about how to enjoy our free time here. This applies to everything -- from eating lunch at 2 p.m. and dinner between 9 and 10 p.m. to drinking tall glasses of "cerveza Cruzcampo" (the Spanish Budweiser) with tapas at one of the billions of bars in the city. And for those of us with a desire to be athletic (even if it's once during a 12-week term), it applies to playing sports. Because soccer is the national sport here, it was only natural that we, too, would want to catch a little "futbol fever." Most of the time we watched soccer games on Spanish television, although quite a few of us went to see the Spain-Argentina exhibition game or the Spain-Ireland game,

Dispatches From Spain: Study abroad is more than educational: it’s an experience

Study abroad is more than educational: it’s an experience Alex Diaz-Granados Columnist (Originally published in the December 1, 1988 issue of Catalyst ) SEVILLE, Spain (CCIS Program) Over the past six weeks of my stay here in Seville as a participant in the College Consortium for International Studies’ Semester in Spain program, I have come to understand how challenging studying abroad really is. Several other students from this campus are also taking part in this program. In many respects, studying abroad is no different from studying at our home college or university. We have our schedule set up much like we do in the U.S. with lectures and reading assignments. We have midterms and finals, of course, although in some classes final exams are given at the director’s discretion. Unlike studying in the U.S., we’re learning about a different country’s history, culture, government and economic system, not by reading about these in a textbook, but by living in it. “It’s be