

{"id":132,"date":"2019-03-15T13:07:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T17:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/2019\/03\/15\/introduction\/"},"modified":"2019-03-15T13:07:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T17:07:00","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/2019\/03\/15\/introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hi everyone,<br \/>My name is Brunilda Bilalaj, and I am a senior majoring in criminal justice here at Temple. To tell you a little bit about myself, I am from Albania and moved to the U.S six years ago. I attended last year of high school in Philadelphia where I graduated with the highest honors and got the president\u2019s award for educational excellence in my graduating class. I took a year off after finishing high school and worked full time. I wasn\u2019t sure what I wanted to study so during that time I did a bit of research. I decided to start at the Community College of Philadelphia as a criminal justice major. I fell in love with the major and decided I would pursue it. I graduated from CCP and got my associate&#8217;s degree then transferred to Temple. The atmosphere at Temple was very welcoming and unique.<br \/>There are many reasons why I choose criminal justice as a major and law enforcement as my future occupation. I wanted to be able to give back. Everything that this great country gave me, I wanted to contribute and become a public servant. I want to be able to help people in need and be there if emergencies arise, I want to be able to educate and inform when it\u2019s appropriate, I want to be able to detect and deter harmful behavior, I want to have adrenaline rushing experiences that make every day different and most importantly I wanted to be able to adapt, learn and challenge myself.<br \/>I could be a police officer with any one of the thousands of police agencies in the country so why National Park Service and why ProRanger program?<br \/>The answer is simple, and I put it this way, you think you\u2019ve seen it all, and then, you go to work. Being part of the National Park Service through the program is a fantastic opportunity. We hopefully will get to work in some of the most beautiful and significant places in the country. When you think you\u2019ve seen it all, you visit a park, and you get shocked by all the wonders, beauties and powerful stories these places carry. No matter where in the National Park Service you work as a law enforcement officer, I\u2019m sure that many of them at least one time in their career have seen something that blew them away. Well, that doesn\u2019t happen as a city police officer. The ProRanger program is an enormous project, and it requires lots of energy and effort to be put together. It&#8217;s a unique opportunity to educate, challenge and prepare us physically, mentally, emotionally for what is coming next. It is a hidden gem at Temple that not a lot know about its existence. The program provides a direct path to future careers by giving us so much to make us better people and better candidates. I want to thank everyone and anyone that we have met in the past months through the program and their willingness to help, guide, mentor and answer our questions. I appreciate all the support, and I\u2019m sure the other ProRangers do too.<br \/>I am not going to be going on a LE internship this summer; however, I will be volunteering to work at Independence NHP. I will be working alongside other departments in the park such as interpretation, administration and maybe some LE. I want to be able to get a broader sense of what each department does and how they cooperate while I prepare for my LE internship next summer. I am very excited and looking forward to new experiences.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi everyone,My name is Brunilda Bilalaj, and I am a senior majoring in criminal justice here at Temple. To tell you a little bit about&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/2019\/03\/15\/introduction\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Introduction<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,46,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-36","category-brunilda-bilalaj","category-introduction-cohort-7","entry"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Paul Paire","author_link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/author\/paire\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}