Honor College Goals

Being a part of Appalachian State University’s Honors College would be an amazing privilege. According to the university, the Honors College has been providing superior education to intellectually-motivated students for more than thirty five years. Being a part of the Honors College would help me promptly reach the personal, intellectual, and professional goals I set for myself as well as optimize my college experience.

During the next four years I expect myself to be a dedicated student, put forth my greatest effort, challenge myself both intellectually and socially, and prepare for my professional career. I believe the Honors College would help me efficiently reach these goals. My personal goals consist of challenging myself and finding a healthy community to be a

part of. If I was accepted into the Honors College I would be enrolled in classes with other honors students and have similar living arrangements. Honors students typically have similar goals, interests, and social preferences.

Living in the Honors and Engagement Village and being surrounded by these students would help me to meet a positive group of friends that I would be able to relate to. Being in the Honors College would also help me challenge myself by being in a competitive environment with intelligent students. My intellectual goals consist of broadening my thinking, taking demanding courses, and optimizing my learning. The Honors College assists students in developing creative and independent thinking. The Honors College also nurtures cultured and caring idea exchange. By participating in innovative discussions with other students I would be able to broaden my thinking as well as fully optimize my learning experience. If I was accepted into the Honors College I would have faculty mentoring, a close-knit learning environment, as well as challenging courses. By having full access to all of these resources I believe I would be able to reach my intellectual goals. My professional goals consist of performing service outreach projects and starting research for my professional career. Each year honors students perform several service learning and community outreach projects, which I would love to be a part

of. Reaching the community and helping others is an immense professional goal for me because I aspire to reach many people in my career through counseling traumatic brain injury patients and families. I would also be able to start research for my professional career by completing the Honors College Thesis. I hope that my thesis project will give me insight as to what I would like to specialize my research in my career on.
If I am accepted into the Honors College I would like to complete a research project for my thesis. A possible question I would research is: How do the effects of concussions differ based on gender? In order to complete this project I would find a group of students on campus that have had a concussion/s. The group would consist of an even number of males and females. I would create a questionnaire for each individual to complete with questions like: How many concussions have you had? How long ago was your last concussion? What symptoms do you still experience today? What activities were/are disrupted by your concussions? After I collected all of my data I would compare and contrast the results in order to determine which gender was affected more and present the results in a research paper. This research project would help me determine who my main audience needs to be in my career. This project could also help me come up with future research topics such as: Why do concussions impact men/women more? Can something be done to further protect the gender that is affected more? Completing the Honors College Thesis will help jumpstart my professional career working with and researching concussions and TBI.
Being a part of Appalachian's Honors College would be a privilege. It would serve as an opportunity to better myself, my education, and my future.