The theme of my Core 101 class was The Meaning of Life. Above is the essay that I submitted in this class about my life's journey. This essay was my favorite because as we discussed our papers in class, it became clear that each of us came from different backgrounds, areas, and majors. This diversity is what made my Core class special. Although the meaning of life is a broad topic, throughout the semester, I came to understand that there is not one definitive answer that everyone accepts, rather each of us had our own deeply rooted belief in what we believed "meaning" was. This class taught me more about relating to people who come from backgrounds different from my own.
Above is the research proposal that I wrote for my First-Year Honors class. The purpose of this assignment was to teach us how to write a research proposal, although these projects were hypothetical and were not required to be carried out. We were required to include some aspect of comedy and encouraged to engage our major or future career choice in the proposal. This assignment was my favorite in this class because it taught me to believe that I can do things that I have never done before. When I received this assignment, I immediately hit the books because I did not know where else to start. I found some ideas related to exercise and laughter, which I initially planned on using for my project. After meeting with the professor, I discovered that amputee recovery was the area that I was most interested in researching. After completing my proposal, I looked at it and could not believe that I had just come up with and written everything in it. This experience gave me more confidence in my own abilities and ideas.