UHON101 Synthesis

today,

I'm going to talk briefly about my experiences

with the honors program and how I learned

what it meant to be an honor student at

Nebraska the semester specifically through how we interact with

the three pillars in our day to day lives and can use those things going forward now.

What exactly are the three pillars and how have

my perspective changed over the course of the semester,

starting off with health and well being.

This first pillar focuses on some of the things that we can do

in order to promote ourselves and our well being on an emotional,

spiritual, physical mental capacity.

What this means for me is taking time when I have

a busy schedule ahead of me or I know that I have

an upcoming an assignment or a test that I'm stressed about

and really reflecting on how well I've been taking care of myself

sometimes, that means taking a break,

sometimes it means finding a snack or getting a big glass of water,

but these small steps can really help propel success in the future simply

because when you're not at your best you don't do your best work.

So that's kind of what I've learned.

I went into this semester thinking that maybe I could

go through just like I had done in high school.

However, I realized that

the types of work that I'm doing are different and

it takes a different toll on my health and well being

and so understanding what works for me has been important in

my development of what I understand health and well being,

to mean

the second pillar is academic and professional development.

It's all about setting yourself up for success,

be it studying for a test, filling out resumes,

applying for jobs and internship opportunities. Now,

coming in this semester,

I knew that professional development would be a part of the college process.

However, I didn't realize how fast

it would all come.

You see,

I was applying for internships just a few weeks into

college and it was overwhelming to say the least.

I didn't know myself,

let alone how was I going to sell myself to a potential employer?

And so some of the things that we learned in our honors impact, how to reinforce this,

and I'll get into that in just a few minutes.

Um, the final pillar is community engagement and global awareness.

This pillar focuses mostly on how we engage on campus,

what types of clubs that we can get involved

with as well as how we engage with our community

here in Lincoln and then how we engage with

communities elsewhere in the world and understanding different religions and

community involvement activities as well as um

just differences that make people unique,

special, important all of that is kind of encompassed in this pillar.

And I do think that I've learned a lot

in my time at college about things like diversity and

how I can be a better proponent of those who may not have a voice of their own.

Um

now

the next thing I'd like to touch on my honors impacts

and the takeaways that I have from those unique experiences.

When we talked about health and well being,

we actually got a chance to visit the Sheldon Museum of Art,

which I had never been to before.

I'm from Kansas city and we do have a few art museums, but this one was

much more simplistic,

much more minimalist and what this helped me do was reflect not

only on the artwork but on myself at a better capacity.

After we went and walked around the gallery for

a few minutes looked at the artwork and whatnot.

We went outside and we um took a chance to just

meditate out in nature and it was a beautiful day.

I remember there were squirrels running around and they kept distracting us

and we didn't actually do that great of a job meditating.

However,

this did give me the chance I needed to de stress

and stop thinking about things like my upcoming calculus exam.

Um and I definitely will visit this museum again when I feel stressed

and overwhelmed because that type of experience was really beneficial to me.

And I think that I could value from more

opportunities to take a step and put myself first.

Now the second honors impact that we did was we met in

a study room at the library and we took personality tests.

One of these was the Myers Briggs test and what I discovered is that I am an I N. T. J.

Now I didn't know exactly what that meant coming in but we talked about it and it means

that I'm a little bit more introverted and that

sometimes I need to assess the situation before I act

and I take in a lot of input and handle it in unique ways and a lot of

these things while maybe I understood that I didn't

necessarily know how to explain it to somebody else.

And so this kind of codification of personality um was really useful. This uh

pillar is academic and professional development

and I think that understanding yourself and

your personality and how that applies to your potential future is very important.

And it's something that I'm glad that I learned in this experience now

The 3rd and Final

honors impact was we met up and we talked

about the different clubs and organizations that we're involved with

here in Nebraska or the clubs that we'd like

to be involved with and I really liked this.

I was interested to see what types of things

of their freshman were getting involved in on campus

because I know you're overwhelmed those first few days

with all the different clubs that are setting up

booths and what not telling you

which clubs to join, which friends to be a part of.

And so not only did I get a chance to share some of my own clubs with my peer mentors

but I got a chance to learn about

some of the other opportunities available on campus,

and this helped me understand community engagement

and global awareness a little bit better

because I didn't even realize how many

opportunities there truly working on campus.

Now.

The third thing I'd like to talk about is leadership

and what that means to me here in college now,

leadership means a few things,

but um to me it's mostly understanding when to take charge and

use your strength and knowing when to let others use theirs.

We talked briefly about this during one of our class periods,

how a leader can take a step back and analyze the situation and then move forward,

not only with their best interests at heart with,

but with the best interest of the team at heart

and leadership can function in a few different ways,

but using these three pillars in order to understand it,

I think really helps give it a little bit more of a real world impact.

So talking about things like health and well being with leadership,

being a leader means that you're taking time to notice when people

on your team are struggling with their health and well being,

it's monitoring your own health and well being so that you

can put the interests of your team ahead of your own

um

as well as academic and professional development,

you have to understand how you can develop as an individual,

as well as how your team can develop going forward in

order to create the best product or the best vision,

whatever you may be working on in your team

that involves a lot of futuristic thinking, which I think that

I learned a little bit more from talking about things like

academic and professional development and then the third and final pillar,

um

talking about global awareness and community outreach,

I think that leadership ties very closely with understanding your

community because a team is a very small community.

If you really think about it, it's

different engagements between individuals that make

up the larger unit and so understanding

each of your team members and the things that they hold dear.

Maybe there have hobbies,

they have clubs that they are part of understanding what drives them,

helps you be a better leader in that long run as well.

The fourth thing I'd like to touch on is failure.

The challenges that I faced here at college now, I went into college very,

very optimistic and I still am largely however,

I did not realize the types of challenges that

I would potentially face in my time here.

So now

the first and I would say probably the most impactful challenge that

I faced is the coronavirus pandemic and the changes that it's required.

Um,

it takes a little bit extra care and caution to engage with

people in the same way that I've been engaging my entire life.

I have to change some of those aspects in order to make sure that

everybody is safe and secure and putting their best interests before my own.

Um and so I have had to be flexible with some

of my classes when they have to move online or when I

have people in my dorm who are getting positive tests and they're

locking up some of the areas that are more common space.

Unlike the lobby as well as the student lounge,

those types of challenges were simply

unpredictable and that made it a lot harder for

me to put forth the best version of myself.

But when I'm able to rely on some of the things that I learned about the three pillars,

I can reflect on my own health and well being and understand that when I put on a mask,

I'm not just doing it for my well being that I'm doing it for everybody else's

as well and I'm trying to promote my community in order to ensure that we can

create a better future academically and professionally.

I've also been challenged in some of my coursework,

I took a lot of math in high school,

so I figured that I would continue to be very successful in Matthew in college,

but I realized that

a lot of the things here in college are different than they were in high school

and that's something that I've come to reflect on these past few weeks as well.

Um

now the final thing that I would like to talk about are my goals going

forward and how my time in the honors program has helped me reflect more broadly,

um, as a potential computing major as well as a potential future engineer.

Um,

so I have had several goals over the course of my time

on this planet, I suppose, and now those goals have been a little bit more directed.

They started off sprawling in many different ways.

And now that I'm at college, I realized that I can hone in on some of my skills,

some of my strengths in order to understand how I could better pursue those goals.

Now, for me, that means building off of my smart goals that I built this semester.

Now, my first goal was to get an internship over the past few weeks,

I've been meeting with potential employers and I actually succeeded

on that goal and that's just the first step in like

creating a better future for myself as well as for my

community because I can contribute in those types of ways.

So now I would say that my next goals are continuing to excel in the classrooms that

ultimately I can graduate with a meaningful degree and

then create a difference in the real world.

After college,

I'd like to go to law school

where I could potentially become an intellectual property

lawyer and secure people's ideas so that they

don't have to worry about whether or not

those ideas are at risk.

And I think that's one way that I can use my strength in order to

help the broader good and I didn't know that coming into college.

But some of the activities that we've done in our honors impacts as well

as in the classroom or just talking to one another have helped me realize that

conversations and things are what I'm good at as well as

the different things that I can bring to the table, understanding my personality.

All of those

steps that I've taken

in order to

secure an internship this summer

as well as

a better future for myself,

have helped me to set goals

that

I hope will come to fruition.

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