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Desert Landscape at Sunrise
Desert Landscape at Sunrise

Retrospective Reflection

I really hope that current honors students can be inspired by my portfolio. I hope they can see my accomplishments as motivation and use this to help them visualize their own journey through college and figure out where they want to go. Over my college years, I have become a strong and confident individual. I have been pushed outside of my comfort zone, which has helped me become more comfortable doing things that seemed intimidating or daunting at first. Engaging in honors contracts, internships, and research for honors credit has really helped shape who I am today.

When I first started in the Honors College, I had a clear vision of where I wanted to go and how I planned to get there. My journey map helped me lay out my goals and stay on track. Throughout my honors experience, I had the opportunity to be an independent learner and take on honors contracts, like my microscopy lab report and my ink analysis paper, which challenged me academically. However, they also helped me become more confident in writing reports and working independently in a lab. My journey map can be seen in the “Showcase Artifact 1 tab” and my honors contracts are highlighted under the “Honors Contracts” tab.

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One of the biggest things I wanted when I joined the Honors College was hands-on learning, and I am really glad I was able to get that—especially through research and internships. During my CFSRE internship, I got a real look at what a day in the life of a forensic scientist is like. This experience confirmed that I was on the right career path. I really wanted to make sure I was doing something I actually enjoyed, and my internship at the CFSRE made that clear. My supervisor, Mia Borrelli, even said, “Everything you guys are doing now is the exact training that a Forensic Scientist 1 will go through before they are able to work on cases by themselves... In fact, you're even working with instruments that a Forensic Scientist 1 cannot use until they become a Forensic Scientist 2, so you're actually getting even more experience than usual.” That was really nice to hear because I knew what I was doing during that “training”, and it gave me more confidence that I am ready and well prepared to go into the field. I cannot wait to work in a forensic lab and put what I have learned to use.

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I am also really grateful for my research experience because it helped me improve my creative thinking in a lab and learn how to problem-solve. With research, there is not always an answer—often times you are trying to find one. So being able to think critically and trust that you know what you are doing is really important. It also made me more open to the possibility of getting a PhD in the future. Right now, I am happy with the idea of working in a lab after graduation, but I will always keep an open mind about continuing my education. Without this experience, I might not have even considered the idea of a master’s or PhD.

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I am also glad I got the chance to work in a diagnostics lab because it helped me realize that I do not want to do that kind of work. I already had a feeling that I would not enjoy working with biological samples, but this confirmed it for me. If I had not tried it, I probably would have always wondered if I was right about that. Even though I did not enjoy the day-to-day work, I still learned important soft skills like organization and communication, so it was still a valuable experience.

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These experiences have really shown me how important hands-on learning is and why trying new things is worth it. I learned that it is okay to try something new because, whether you like it or not, you still learn something about yourself. Even though I did not enjoy working in the clinical lab, I still gained skills that will help me in the future.

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Not only have these experiences helped me work toward graduation, but so have the courses I have taken. I have learned a lot of technical skills that I was able to use in my hands-on learning experiences, like my internship and research. Without putting in effort in these classes, I know I would have struggled in those experiences because I often found myself looking back at my notes or old lecture slides when I got stuck. Courses like analytical chemistry, instrumental chemistry, and forensic chemistry 1 and 2 were especially helpful.

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I am really glad I got to take advantage of everything the Honors College had to offer. I hope future honors students can see how these experiences helped me and use that as inspiration to make the most of their own journey.

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