Vol. 3 No. 16
Hello, friends. This blog has been quiet for a bit as we work out how to launch a somewhat new approach to the blog. We are going to start trying to have more and more students share their experiences with Honors and the work they are doing in their Honors classes. If you want to share some thoughts, please email me at honorsstudies@flcc.edu.
This week, our blog comes from Brianna Smith ('19) who is an AA Liberal Arts and Sciences : Literature major who is graduating this May. She is heading up north to SUNY Potsdam to continue studying Literature and would like to someday be a professor. Perhaps at a fine community college like this one!
Honor’s Blog.
When I started my search for transfer schools, the second
question (after: do they have my major?) that I asked was: do they have an
Honor’s program? If the answer was no, they were automatically shifted down my
list of potentials. But if the answer was yes, I began to delve deeper, needing
to know if transfer students could be accepted and what the program looked
like. I settled at last on SUNY Potsdam, who offer an Honor’s program for which
transfer students are eligible, a program which, like Honors Studies at FLCC,
promise smaller class sizes and an enhanced learning experienced. This search
however was not unprompted nor the result of errant curiosity.
Since I began my collegiate journey I have found that my
experiences as an Honors student have been among the most formative of my time
at FLCC. Though I stumbled into Honors quite on accident I became immediately
smitten and soon designated myself an Honors Studies scholar. The Honors
courses at FLCC have allowed me to realize a more complete image of myself and
for the first time craft a vision of my future which feels both satisfying and
achievable. During my time in the program, I have completed thus far
twenty-four honors credits, have attended dinners and convocations, and have
been invited to speak to faculty about what the program means from a student
perspective. Yet I’m not unique in this.
The gift of Honors is that it opens students up to a world
of possibility they often never knew existed before. By fostering curiosity and
the academic tradition through conversational avenues, Honors Studies gives
students the gift of exploration – both of various topics, and of themselves.
Honors also gifts to students a chance to share their unique experiences
regaining their Honors events and courses and fosters an environment where
student voices are highly valued and variant perspectives seen as equitable in
what they bring to discussion. The reason so many students come back to Honors
semester after semester is that it gives a chance to find and share one’s
voice, and oftentimes a platform to do so beyond even the walls of the
classroom. Through Honors, students build deep and lasting relationships with
one another and rapport with professors and staff, bonds that last far beyond
the walls of the Honors House.
This is my last semester at FLCC, and though a stringent
schedule has prevented me from adding to my Honors class-list I still consider
myself deeply entrenched in Honors Studies. Perhaps this gets at the most
beautiful, most poignant lesson I have yet learned through Honors: that it
never leaves you. Honors is not a spring flower which withers away, but rather
is a bud which, when properly nourished, plants roots deep inside of your
heart. The lessons which have strengthened me as a learner and an individual,
the unforgettable nights spent in three hour seminars, the friendships I have
built through the program – they will all remain with me long after I have last
looked upon those hallowed halls. I want too, to believe like that though I
shall soon be whisked away from the smell of brewing tea and the soft
whispering of carpeted footsteps, some semblance of me will remain with the
house and with Honors. Because Honors’ greatest gift is its people, the
students and staff who make it possible, who give Honors a life all its own. We
are all a part of that life, whether a student earns three credits or thirty.
I’d like to image that when I am in a new Honors program, even three hours from
this place which has become home, I will carry Honors with me with the
certainty that it now carries some of me in exchange.
