May 1st, 2017 Judges, Senior Project Board First Colonial High School 1272 Mill Dam Road Virginia Beach, VA 23454 When I first arrived at First Colonial I was not met with the difficulty of an Intro to Law class nor was I met with the making of new friends in the academy. I was instead met with going down the same course that any normal First Colonial student went through, this was because of my rejection into the Legal Studies Academy my freshman year. While the feelings of defeat certainly persisted throughout my first year in high school they were outweighed by the drive to do better and make it into the academy. That motivation paid off in the end as by the beginning of my sophomore year I was accepted into the Legal Studies Academy. The drive to do better and improve myself was stretched over the course of my high school life but it never went away. When my senior year rolled around I had multiple different senior project topics that I had from the years prior ranging from gun control to copyright law. Being completely unable to decide which topic I wished to research, I went to my debate coach Aaron Pratt who told me to do something that would not only be interesting to research but also to do something that has never been done before. That’s when it clicked to me in terms of what I wanted to do for my research paper and it was vigilantism. While many choose topics with that effect many people in their day to day lives such as mental health or the prison system, I wanted to learn about something that almost every person I asked had no knowledge on, discovering not only the reality but the scope of vigilantism. Once my paper was completed and it was time to do my project, I did not want to become another one of the many students who would be doing a seminar on their topic. While the information regarding vigilantism needed to be exposed to the public, I wanted to do so in a creative way that challenged me as well. Turning to one of my passions, I decided to write a book for the project in order to try and show the real consequences of vigilantism while using an entertaining medium to give the information. While I enjoyed writing the book, I never before had actually shown any of my writings to anyone aside from personal friends who were interested. Showing an entire book I wrote to the public not only took more courage than I have ever given before, but it also took the time and dedication to one project that I never had given to anything else. Now that I have finished my senior project, I realized that the things I was fearful of were simply nothing in the grand scheme of things. I am glad that the Legal Studies Academy gave me the opportunity to be able to not only expose the public to an issue not many even know exists, but also allowed me to express my creativity in ways I never have before. I thank you for taking the time to read over not only this letter but also my entire weebly as a whole. Sincerely, James Byng