Name: Erica Jackson
Year: Senior
Majors: Psychology, Criminal Justice AND Women’s and Gender Studies (Yes, that’s three majors.)
Hometown: Grand Rapids, Michigan
Erica Jackson plopped down on my couch, still wearing her dress pants and shoes from a long day at one of her two internships. Her naturally curly hair was pinned up, and a blue statement necklace hung over her grey sweater. She wrapped my fuzzy blanket around her petite figure, and I could tell that she was exhausted. Erica manages to balance three majors, two internships, being an active member in the sorority Alpha Xi Delta and having a personal life. All at the same time. And trust me, she looks good doing it.
Tell me a little about your internships? They’re during business hours, so I work 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. I go to work, I go to class, and then I go back to work – which is why I’m still wearing my dress pants.
In my academic internship, I work with a JCO, a Juvenile Court Officer, which is essentially a probation officer that is specifically trained for juveniles. That is with the 30th circuit court downtown. With that, we do all sorts of things.
We obviously work with juveniles. We do a pre-sentence investigation, and then we maintain their probation. A pre-sentence investigation is after they’ve been charged, after they’ve put in a plea or made a plea bargain and before they’ve actually had their sentencing. We go through an entire investigation and evaluation process when we investigate their history, their mental health, their recidivism (their likelihood of recommitting), how well they will respond to treatment and so on.
After their sentence, we manage their probation. So during that pre-sentence period, the JOC creates a report and creates an entire recommendation, which the judge can either accept or deny. Then the JOC keeps the juvenile in line. Most of them are good kids. Most of the time, I’d say six or seven out of ten times, they are good kids who have made bad decisions, have learned things incorrectly or haven’t been taught the right things. So they commit the wrong actions without realizing it because that’s what they’ve been taught.
We also do home visits, so I will drive to their house and hang out with them or to their school to check up on them. Sometimes they’re in the Youth Detention Center when they get in trouble. I pick them up from school and take them to their different groups. So we really do manage every inch of their probation.
How about the other internship? With the other internship that’s basically a job, I’m at the 54-B District Court as a paid intern, and I serve under the Chief Probation Officer and all three regular probation offers. I help with performing pre-sentence interviews and forming pre-trial reports that are used as recommendation to the judges for probation or other types of sentences.
What’s cool about this court, which I love, is that there are two specialty courts within the court. The first one is Veteran Court, which is where anyone who reaches veteran status can be voluntarily submitted to this court. They could be assigned to a mentor, they can get special services, therapy and group counseling for things like PTSD and trauma. We have an individual with a brain injury who was affected by a blast, and it’s affected his behavior. They’re a very tight-knit group who keep themselves in check.
There’s another one, which you can get assigned to voluntarily. If you get charged with something that’s been influenced by alcohol, you can go to Sobriety Court. This is for things like DUIs, assault or larceny or burglary in which alcohol is the main factor. If alcohol is their issue, then they can get assigned to this court and get special services to do with alcohol.
But what’s really exciting is that there’s a new one coming, in which they’ve assigned me to be the intern in charge of it. I’ve been paired with an individual probation officer, who I love and want to be – for the brand new drug court. This is a new one in a district court. Drug court is addiction, so you are voluntarily assigned to this court based on your addiction. This is only opiate and prescription drugs, not weed or anything like that. People who are referred to this court are people who commit crimes to fuel their drug addiction. So that’s going to be really awesome, because that touches MSU students who don’t have a prescription for adderall, but abuse it and have become addicted to it because now they can’t focus without it. Drug use is very much a hidden thing, so this will help them get over their addiction and give them the help they need.
Is probation something you’d be interested in continuing with after graduation? Possibly. It’s nice because you don’t need to get a master’s degree to become a probation officer; there’s a special program. It’s very appealing to me because I don’t think I want to go to law school. I’m a people person, and I’m afraid that going to law school will put me too much behind a book and I’ll lose that human interaction which is why I like probation. Sometimes officers see their clients more than they see their own friends. Which is great for the JCOs because they are often the most stable and positive influence in their clients’ lives. It’s a nice combination of legal and social.
Have you ever seen Law and Order: SVU? No, actually! Everybody asks me that, but I’ve never seen it. My godfather was in the marines for many years, and he’s been deployed multiple times and he’s a great guy. Then he was in the FBI, and then the CIA and now I think he works for SWAT. It wasn’t that he was my life goal or anything, but it was like he made it almost second-nature for me. This isn’t a TV show; people do this on a regular basis.
What’s the best thing about what you’re doing now? No day is ever the same. It’s not like you go to work and sit at a desk, eat lunch and then go back to work. We could show up and it could be like, ‘Oh, one of our kids got sent to the youth center today, so we have to go hang out there.’ On the flip side, there could be a situation we’ve never encountered before, and we have to come up with an entirely new plan for an individual. You have people come in every day with situations that are new and different and it’s never boring. It’s not business.
Have you always known this was what you wanted to do? I didn’t even plan it. I started pre-med, went on a study abroad, and I expected to love pre-med and come back and keep going with my life. But I hated it, so I came back and did a complete 180. I knew it wasn’t the right place for me. I came back and switched my major, and they discouraged me from triple-majoring. They said I was going to have so much homework and not enough time, I’d have to do an internship for two of the three majors, I was going to need research if I wanted to go to grad school… So, I slowly knocked them out, one at a time. I took summer classes to catch up to sophomore status, and I mixed my classes so that I would have a nice mix each semester from each of the majors. The fall of my junior year, I got my first internship. And now I’ve been in the same court for two semesters and have been in two very separate parts of the court system.
All of these things are just happening, not to say that all of these things are just happening to me. It’s just about not saying no to an opportunity. I don’t make that much. But now I have this amazing opportunity that I would never get. I’m working. I’m actually getting to DO something, to contribute, to take something that I’m passionate about and do something with it instead of just reading about it. And I’m so exhausted, but I’m contributing and participating in the real world. It’s not just school anymore.
Basically, the message here is that you can make a plan all you want, but don’t be afraid to change it. I changed it, and that was the best decision I’ve ever made. And don’t say no to an opportunity. I’m exhausted out of my mind, but it is the coolest semester of my life. And I still do everything else. They told me I couldn’t do it all, and I said watch me. And here I am, graduating in four years with three degrees, and a sorority, and internships, and a job most of the time, and my mental sanity – more or less. It is possible. You can have it all, as long as everything is the right thing.