Monday, December 14, 2009

Honors History Blog #4

1. Discuss your successes as an honors student this past semester.
As an honors student, I think that this semester I learned how to space out my work in order to get things done fully for assignments. An example is the honors literature writings we had to do several times through the semester. These were roughly once every 3 weeks, meaning I'd have to read and research an entire book and write a paper on a prompt following it. Surely I wouldn't be able to do this without strategic time spacing and work evenly spread through the 3 weeks, yes? Sadly, I had to learn the hard way that this was how it should be done. The first essay, which was for a Huckleberry Finn prompt, was forgotten until the weekend before it was due, and I ended up rushing to get it done and not putting my full effort into it, and basically not even really understanding the entire book when I was writing the essay. Thankfully, I learned from the mistake and made sure to understand the book and what the prompt is the next time the essay came around, which is quite a success if you ask me.

2. Discuss what you might have done differently if you do this past semester of honors over again.
If I could've done this semester over, I would've taken what I learned from the Huck Finn experience (mentioned up there ^) and made sure that I spaced work through the weeks evenly from the very start instead of having to learn from my mistakes by making the mistakes in the first place. However, it's been proven by Randy that it's best to learn from mistakes and know what you're doing wrong than just know what you're doing right and be careless about it, so maybe it's better that I learned from what I've done wrong. Other than this, I'm quite content with how the semester has been.

3. Discuss your goals for honors in the second semester.
For next semester, I hope to continue learning as a student, education-wise, and learning techniques on how I can save myself from bombing assignments and projects. For 2nd semester I'd really like to focus on my strengths and weaknesses in writing essays. I'm not the best at the english language, so it's best to learn how I can change this and improve in this area. My essays can be a little bit all over the place so I also hope to work on structure, and how to get my point across clearly and so the reader can understand fully.

4. If you could choose any parts of literature and history for our honors work, what would you pick and why?
If I could choose anything, at any point in the semester, I would choose to pick a modern piece of literature, like a book written in the 21st century. We didn't have that too much as a normal student or a honors student in this class, mainly reading things from 20th century and earlier (i.e., Scarlet Letter, Great Gatsby, Huck Finn, Desert Solitaire). I'd enjoy reading something about modern day society or things of the like, and not just things that are far in the past.

(Now this isn't exactly about Honors work, but just a side note)
Also, I might suggest that the nature reading wasn't too positive either. I believe the point of the nature reading was to remind us students that there is plenty of earth left and the fact that humans are living on earth is not a bummer, but hearing of other book's plots and my own wasn't really what I'd call uplifting novels. My book, desert solitaire, mainly reminded us of how us humans are permanently affecting the once-untouched valleys and deserts, not to mention how we live our lives in a constant dreary routine. Not too optimistic, I'd say, but that's just my opinion.

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