Online Colleges

When I was in my freshman year of college, I had a teacher that said we were going to do something different.  He stated that we would be writing someone that we had never met.  We were going to be writing someone that a lot of people are scared of.  We would be writing a pen pal.  Not a normal pen pal mind you, but a prison pen pal.

A lot of us in class turned and looked at each other.  How can he expect us to write to a criminal behind bars?  Why would we want to do that?

He explained that a lot of people in life make mistakes.  Does not mean that we are any different.  We could make mistakes that make us end up in prison, we must learn from their mistakes.

So I go to a prison pen pal site to do a little research.  I find that there are a lot of penpal sites out there all around the world.  A few of those sites cater to prison inmates only.  I found that they get their family to pay for a listing on the sites to get exposure.

So I look on the site letterstoprison.com and look at the type of people they have on the site.  There are male inmates, female inmates, and even a few that are both I am guessing.  I see inmates that are short term and some that are even death row.  So I still ask myself what they are getting besides letters in the mail?

I pick a female inmate from Texas.  She is 24 years old and pretty.  I don’t know what her crime is, but the picture did catch my eye.  I guess I’m still a guy.  The site showed everything from eye color, size, race, sex of the person, hair color, hobbies, pictures, and even I letter from the inmate.

On Friday I sit down and start to write the letter.  What would I write about?  I don’t know this person.  I finally decide to tell her a little about myself.  I explain that I am on a project from school.  I tell her what I look like.  I tell her my age, town I live in, and a few other particular details.  One question that I do ask her is why she posted a listing on letterstoprison.com?  Doesn’t she feel weird being a prison pen pal?

I mail the letter Saturday morning.  I then go about my normal life.

A week and half later I checked my mail box and guess what, I had a letter from Mellissa (name changed of course).  I toss it in my back pack and keep going about my life.  Leter that night I sit down and open the letter.  It is a simple letter with great handwriting.  She starts out by telling me she thanks me for writing.  She tells me a little more about her life in prison, why she posted her listing, and about some of the letters she gets.  She says the reason why she posted the listing on a pen pal site was that she was lonely.  Mellissa said, “The letters are the bright part of my day.  I don’t know if I could make it through the week without them.”  She said that she gets different letters from about 4 different people regularly.  She said some are good some are just perverted sexual content.  She said some guys just want to talk sex to a “female behind bars”.  She says she gets a lot of talk about rape behind bars.  She said she is not there to make them happy with dirty talk.  She ends the letter with a simple request, “keep in touch”.

Over the next few months we did write each other several times.  She finally told me she was in jail for a drug charge and she would be getting out in a year.  We told each other about our experiences.  I feel like I did make her life happier for a while.  Maybe I could even make a difference.  We did talk a lot about God.

I know that this was a class project, but this did change me.  I see that any of us could end up in places where they are.  We are no different then the people behind bars.  We just choose to follow the law or some people just don’t get caught.  Either way, they are still humans.  They still feel..  They still breath..  Maybe my letter did not make that much of a difference in her life, but it made a difference in mine.

I suggest you go to one of the prison pen pal sites and write a inmate yourself.  There are a few different pen pal sites out there.  I chose letterstoprison.com because it is international.  I may decide to write someone in some very far off land.

I end this with a quote:

“Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together” – these are the golden words that describes the true meaning of the term ‘friendship’. In this era of hi-tech communications this relationship has undergone a sea of changes, in the process transforming it from better to best.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/college-and-university-articles/class-project-find-a-prison-pen-pal-1073484.html

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 6:19 am and is filed under Online College University. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.