Have you (or anyone you know) ever been arrested?

[Retoru]

Battery is the act of committing violence against a person (Punching someone in the face)
Assault is the threat of violence against a person (Screaming I'm going to kill you while swinging a baseball bat at someone)

Gonna have to call you on that one. Assault is physical violence upon another person, or as defined by the statute "an attempt to cause or purposely, knowingly, or recklessly causing bodily injury to another; or, negligently causing bodily injury to another with a deadly weapon.". Battery is a more vicious form of assault, and in modern times is most often applied to incredibly unfair fights, such as an adult harming a child or a man striking a woman. While both crimes are similar, battery tends to carry a harsher punishment that almost always results in some jail time. In most cases of assault the offender pays a fine and is sentenced to no additional time beyond what was served from apprehension until bailing/bonding out of jail or going to prelims and being RoR'd out.

I know you're a criminal justice major and all, but maybe you should pay more attention in your classes.

Assault: A crime that occurs when one person tries to physically harm another in a way that makes the person under attack feel immediately threatened. Actual physical contact is not necessary; threatening gestures that would alarm any reasonable person can constitute an assault

Battery: Actual, intentional and unlawful touching or striking of another person against the will of the other or unlawfully and intentionally causing bodily harm to an individual.

I do pay attention in my classes, these definitions are straight out of my textbook.

You might try looking up the actual statutes, those definitions are not accurate. My assault definition was directly from the US criminal code. Of course, if you live in some other country the definition could be different, but the criminal codes of the US, Britain, and Canada all recognize a very similar definition. None make any mention of it being an assault to make "threatening gestures", whatever that means.