Cora Belle

Well to start things off my name is Cora, I was born April 12, 1994 to Lavurne in Reno, NV. I’m going into tenth grade at the best school I know which is Dayton High School Home of the Dust Devils. Sports are pretty much my life so I would die if I couldn’t play basketball or volleyball. During sports seasons I’m known to have the most school spirit and the best attitude, and since sports season never really ends I kind of have those all the time. I am in student counsel and the representative for the sophomore class. I am in a group called Stand Tall Don’t Fall, STDF, an organization that is against under age drinking, drugs, and tobacco. They have me as the leader in training and will take over my junior year. In school my favorite classes are P.E. and English, I’ve been told by all my English teachers that I’m a good write and that I should write stories, I like writing my thoughts on things and sometimes stories.
One thing I’m really passionate about is nature and earth. I think that everything is beautiful and everything has meaning and its all here for a purpose. I love all animals and I feel that eating something I love is unnatural, and I feel horrible every time I think about eating meat, so I am vegetarian. Since I’m so passionate about nature, I am going to go to college to learn Zoology and would like to be a photographer and take pictures of nature and sea life. After college I would like to travel across the world and visit everywhere I can.
Working with Linda this summer will help me go more towards my aspirations that I have for my life. In the fourth grade I went on a field trip to River Wranglers down by the Carson River out past the schools, the golf course and all the ranches. We got parted in to groups and sent off to different stations, one was about the water cycles and you tossed dice that landed on part of the cycle and then you put that color bead on the bracelet. Another station was about the animals that lived around the river and you could touch the animals’ fur and look at the bones and such. The last one I remember was when we went down to the river and got samples of the water and we would make the water cloudy with other substances that I can’t really remember very well. The field trip was probably the most fun I’d had the whole year of fourth grade.
This summer Community Chest in Virginia City, NV, wrote a grant for stimulus money and was then given 100,000 dollars to pay for the workers in The Comstock Workers Program. You had either been picked by the people in charge of the communities or you were nominated by the counselors to be put into the program. In Dayton we had 30 workers and I was lucky enough to be put into the program. We work 15 hours a week and 5 hours we have to do community service, which we do on Wednesdays, in order to get the full 20 hours week to get our full paychecks. We get paid $100 a week and in order to get the full $100 you have to work hard and do as you’re told. All 30 of us got put at different jobs, a few people work at the same place but on different shifts, and we could pick three possible places we would be working at. I chose to work at the Senior Center in Dayton, Healthy Communities Coalition in Dayton, and River Wranglers which I was told was in Dayton. We got stickers with who we were placed with and had to give our employers a call to set up an interview for our jobs. I got placed at HCC, as the office secretary and I would work with everybody in the office and I already knew who everybody was since my mom works there. I talked to my mom about it and told her this wasn’t where I would like to go, I only wrote it down because I had a space left and I really wanted to work at River Wranglers. We both talked to Frieda and decided that an office job would be to boring for me, and so I was moved to River Wranglers. Calling Linda to work out the interview was very hard since we played phone tag for a while but then when we got to talk we set up an interview for Thursday at the Community Center. I was really nervous to go interview with Linda because I didn’t know what questions I would have to answer or what would happen like she said she didn’t want me or I wouldn’t fit into the description she was looking for. The only thing I really knew going into that interview was Linda was a nice lady that my mom knew. Well to say the least I really had no reason to be nervous at all because the questions she asked me where different from what a real interview would be like and they really made me think about myself and what I was like. After starting my first day with Linda at the weed awareness workshop and after my second day working at her office coloring pictures I knew that this summer would be very fun for me if not her as well. Today is my third day and she is making me blog this for the River Wranglers website but it’s apart of my job and I like writing so I’m digging it. Linda is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and gotten to work with. She knows a lot of people and I meet a few of them everyday I’m with her. For my first job and her being my first boss I think I got off easy because of how wonderful she is. Well this is it I’ve got nothing left to say for now, so peace out.
- Cora J.