Gateway to University Honors Documentation
Because I am in the University Honors Program at UC, I took
the course Gateway to University Honors this semester. Gateway is a one-semester class for freshman
to introduce us to how the Honors Program is run, what is expected of us, and
how to successfully fulfill our Honors Experience expectation. In this course of only UHP students, I was
able to connect with a smaller group of four students every class as we shared
our assignments and helped each other understand and improve our work. Much of the work done in this class involved
learning about reflection and that it is vitally important if we ever want to
improve ourselves. Reflection is one of the
most important parts of UHP and its expectations, and we learned the “What? So
what? Now what?” method of reflection which demands one to dive deeper into
what he’s reflecting on and how he can use the experience to impact his future
for the better. Coming into Honors, I
was not sure what to expect because I was unfamiliar with the program; I
honestly chose to be involved in Honors because I knew it would look good on
job applications in the future. However,
I am very grateful to have taken this course.
It taught me a lot about the program and its incredible goal of wanting
to help me grow as a student, leader, community member, and person
overall. I think the Gateway class was
very good at informing me of opportunities I have regarding my future honors
experiences and how I can use reflection to really see personal growth. I will surely use my new knowledge to apply
for honors seminars and self-designed studies which before seemed very
intimidating to me. I now understand
that the process is much less scary than I previously thought, and that I can
do things I love while improving myself in the fields of leadership, community
engagement, and all the other UHP thematic areas. This course has also taught
me that personal reflection is important in life in general, and I want to
maintain personal reflection through either a blog or journal for the rest of
my life because I know that reflection can help me see what I am good at and
what I can improve on as well as just teaching me more about myself in
general. Attached to this post is our
first assignment from this semester, our life timeline, which was our first
assignment on how to properly reflect.
It is very interesting to see that assignment and remember that I barely
knew how I should properly reflect on events in my life, but now I cannot wait
to have honors experiences because I know that I will grow so much and actually
be able to see and apply my growth for the rest of my life. I am very glad to have taken this course and
be involved in UHP at UC, and I am very excited to see what the future has for
me here.
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Self-Designed Experience Proposal
In the Honors Program at UC, one of the ways we can fulfill an Honors Experience over the course of our time at the University is through the completion of a self-designed experience. For the Gateway to Honors course, we have been asked to develop a mock proposal for a self-designed experience which we may or may not want to complete later in our college careers. Personally, my proposal is regarding an experience highlighting growth in Leadership as I lead Young Life at a Cincinnati-area High School. I intend on leading no matter what, and truly may use this proposal in the future as the basis for a future Honors Experience. Take a look at the project and what I might be doing in the future!
A Personal Reflection on a Passion
For this course, I have all been asked to reflect on a personal passion I possess and post about it here. What is it that I am truly passionate about? What in my life has become very important to me? Why is this particular thing so important to me? What am I going to do about my passion? These are all fantastic questions! If you want to know their responses, read this awesome document in which I explore one of my passions and learn more about me and something I hold dear to me in this life. God bless!