Honors Journey
These are the projects I worked on during my first semester as an honors student. I have added a reflection for each of these artifacts to explain my growth! I hope future or current honors students can be inspired by my journey and apply any relevant experiences to their own college endeavors.
I Am Statement
My "I am Statement" describes who I am, where my values lie, and what is important to me as an honors student.
As an honors student, speaking to future or current honors students, I am an active member in the honors college, my workplace, and church organization. Being involved in these activities has shown me the importance of honesty and determination, and how these traits contribute to great leadership. I am self-aware, self-driven, and am able to learn from my mistakes instead of being embarrassed or feeling down about them. This allows me to feel confident when trying new activities and encourages me to engage more with my peers and reach out to others. I love accomplishing my goals because it strengthens me and allows for positive mental and physical change in my life. This is who I believed I was during my first year in college.​
​
Reflection:
Now that I am a senior and only a few months away from graduating, I wanted to reflect on how I have changed/stayed the same. Overall, I still possess all of the traits I had before. I continue to be self-driven, a hard worker, and honest. I still believe that these traits contribute to great leadership. During my time in college, I have had many opportunities to hold a leadership position, and I can confirm that these traits were invaluable during my leadership experiences. Holding a leadership role has not only strengthened these traits in me but also boosted my confidence in myself. Not only was I a leader to others, but I became a leader to myself. I taught myself that I am smart and can handle being put in difficult or uncomfortable situations. I became more confident in myself, and I will take this confidence with me in my future endeavors.
If you would like to check out any of the leadership positions I held during my time in college, please check out my "Honors Experiences" Page!
Photos Over the Years
Internship
Traveling to Greece
Senior Year Headshot
Traveling to Wyoming
I Want to Become Statement
My "I want to become statement" describes my goals, ambitions, and the path I want to go down in life. It reflects on my future self.
Through the honors college, as a freshman, I want to become a strong and independent individual. I want to finish my last few years of college off strong and graduate with honors and outstanding grades. I want to become a leader and gain experience through working in a lab. I would love to engage in internships in hopes of meeting people in a similar field as me and gaining experience.
​
I want to have the chance to study abroad and learn more about different cultures around the world. I value other people’s cultures, and I want to learn more about them. I desire to obtain a stable job that brings me joy and makes me feel like I am making a difference in this world. I want to work in the forensic science field and provide families with closure when a loved one has passed away unexpectedly. I want to grow my social circle and become someone that others can rely on and depend on. I want others to feel they can trust me and look up to me as a role model. I want to be happy and satisfied with where I am in my life and be able to have a significant other who can share in my joy and values. Traveling and exploring the world is something I want to experience with my future husband. I am currently doing what I can to make these dreams come true.
​
Reflection:
Now that I am a senior, I want to reflect on who I wanted to become. I am pleased with myself because looking back on what I wrote made me realize that I have achieved a lot of my goals. I am finishing college strong with a 3.9 GPA, and I have made the Executive Dean's list every semester so far. I am proud to have achieved my academic goals, and look forward to graduating in a few months with a double major in chemistry and forensic science with honors! I became the leader that I wanted to be. I was a recitation leader for chemistry for a year, a biology lab TA for one semester, and a forensic science lab TA for a year. These leadership experiences taught me a lot about myself and what it takes to be a leader.
​
I also had the opportunity to intern at two different internships! Doing so taught me what I did and did not want in a career. I was able to do some traveling over the summer, where I got to learn about different people and cultures, which was something I wanted to experience. I am so blessed that I was able to become the person I wanted to be, and I continue to have similar goals in mind for the near future! I would still love to work in a forensic science lab; however, I am also open to working in an analytical chemistry lab! I will be happy working in either type of lab! I still want a husband with whom I can share joy and values. I will continue to do what I can to meet these goals.
​​​
If you would like to check out any of the leadership positions or internships I held during my time in college, please check out my "Honors Experiences" Page!
​
​
Journey Map
My journey map is a visual representation of my "I am" statement and "I want to become" Statement. It reflects my goals, ambitions, and past experiences that have shaped me into who I am as an honors student.
Reflection: Now as a senior, my journey map has not changed as my next goals are still to graduate, get a new job, get married, move into a house, travel the world with my husband, and finally start my own family.
Engaged Learning & Leadership Plan (ELL)
By participating in Undergraduate Lab Work, Internships, and research opportunities, I can contribute to my identity as an honors student by engaging in hands-on experiences. I value hands-on learning because it does a great job of capturing a specific activity in real life. Learning how to do things from a lecture slide, listening to a professor teach, or reading about certain things in textbooks can be informative, but none completely apply to the real world.
​
Some things you cannot learn until you physically immerse yourself in it. It is easier to learn about something when you are doing it, instead of watching others do it or reading about how others have done it. By engaging in any or all of these learning experiences (undergrad lab work, internships, research, etc.), I will not only gain hands-on experience but also meet people in a similar field as me. Networking is something I plan to intentionally participate in because having a connection to people and places is a great way to get a job or be able to experience something unique. These connections can also be used to help get me other internships and can also be used as references.
​
By engaging in these learning experiences, I will become more independent in my work. Each experience will enhance my confidence in myself. As of now, my plan is to hopefully start working in a research lab within the next few months. I plan on using the professor I will be working with as a reference to get an internship over the summer/fall semester. Finally, I will start looking into undergrad experiences such as being a recitation leader or lab teaching assistant.
​
These experiences will help develop my communication skills by working with others and will aid me in becoming a better problem solver by exposing myself to difficult, uncomfortable, and unfamiliar situations. These experiences will force me to grow in my knowledge and push myself to become the person I want to be.
​
(Check out the "Honors Experience" page to learn more about my involvement in these learning experiences, and how I achieved this plan!)
ELL Reflection
I successfully participated in undergraduate research, which boosted my confidence in the lab. I was able to apply what I learned in my research to my summer internship, and I realized that it taught me things I couldn’t have learned in a classroom. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to engage in hands-on learning, as it was exactly what I had hoped for.
I also surprised myself by achieving my goal of becoming a teaching assistant (TA). I acted as a TA for biology, forensic science, and chemistry. These leadership roles taught me how to manage my time, communicate with others, and deepen my understanding of the material, as I realized that teaching a topic is one of the best ways to fully understand it.
​
Through these experiences, I became more confident in unfamiliar situations, and I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. Moving forward, I plan to set more goals to guide my future, knowing I will give 100% of my effort to achieve them, just as I did here.
