James, Jaquine

Hi everyone, my name is Jaquine James, but I normally go by JJ because majority of people can not pronounce my name. I was born in Los Angeles and lived in Ohio for a very short period of my life as a child. My parents ended up moving back to Los Angeles for a short period of time before ultimately residing in Palmdale. For those of you who do not know where Palmdale is located, it is 55 miles north of the UCLA campus and 55 minutes away with zero traffic. I have been living here for 18 years of my life. I am commuting twice a week from where I live to UCLA until I make my move near the campus in the beginning of November. After commuting on my first day this past Monday and sitting in 1 hour traffic, this move can't happen any sooner. 

I am a transfer student from Antelope Valley College where I attended for 3 years. I graduated from there this past June with my AA in Administration of Justice. Here at UCLA, I am a Sociology major because I like studying the human behavior and I can use this degree with law as well. My career goal is to be a police officer or a probation officer for the youth. Either one would work fine with me because I love helping people. As of right now, I am in the middle part of backgrounds with the L.A.P.D hoping to get my foot into the police academy. I come from a pretty dysfunctional family where I was exposed to a lot of violence, drug, and alcohol abuse within my household. As you can see, I was the only one with my head on straight and was the first one in my family to obtain a degree and get accepted into a top ranked university in the country. My family is very proud of my accomplishments thus far as I continue to break down barriers in my family.

In conclusion, art has never been on my radar, but while I am here I might as well make the best of it like I do everything else. Once I graduate with my bachelors here at UCLA, I don't know if I will be pursuing my masters degree after this, I am just taking it as I go. Anyway, during my time in this class, I hope to get to know my classmates a little better, and if you'd like, you can find my social media accounts on my classmates page.