Walter McKenna
The extra work done through the Honors Program was worth it because it demonstrated a continued effort towards a specific academic track. This supplemental work, alongside my research and senior thesis, contributed to graduate school acceptance.
I wanted to join the Honors Program because I was very interested in enhancing the education I was receiving. I greatly enjoyed the classes I was enrolled in and believed that additional work or research could potentially help me in the long run. To start, the Honors Program was a great opportunity for me to meet fellow classmates as a freshman in 2016. I was fortunate to be enrolled in a "History of Baseball" course with many other new members of the program and it was a great way to not only ease into the college academic workload, but to have a fun class free of any stress associated with Rookdom.
Fast forward a couple of years and the Honors Program had progressively put me in a great position to succeed academically and professionally. My time management and public speaking skills were tested through the required contract course during my sophomore year. Even though I was a biology major with a chemistry minor, I was afforded the latitude to write a technical report on physical fitness and helped instruct several Physical Education classes to my peers.
During my Honors Program Thesis Preparation course junior year, I was able to dive deeper into the environmental engineering research I was conducting through the biology department at the time. When senior year was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many Honors Program components were closely tied to work done through individual senior thesis classes.
The extra work done through the Honors Program was worth it because it demonstrated a continued effort towards a specific academic track. This supplemental work, alongside my research and senior thesis, contributed to graduate school acceptance and has stood out on my resume for job applications.
