Fall 2018 full course descriptions and experiences

UK 101: Academic Orientation

An introductory course to the University of Kentucky, this class met for an hour twice a week through midterm. It was a really easy class, as one could guess. We had a few assignments such as visiting the art museum on campus, going to out-of-class events, and signing up for organizations. It got everyone comfortable with being a student, which is really important to freshmen.

ECO 391: Economics & Business Statistics

My first "real" class experience was in ECO 391. It was an upper-division class that I was able to take because of my completion of two statistics courses through my AP Stats credit in high school. I was a freshman surrounded by upperclassmen, mostly juniors, and our professor was a brand new Ph.D student who had never taught before. This class expanded on what I learned in AP stats and applied that knowledge as well as new statistics principles to the business world.

HON 101: The Individual and Society

My first honors class of my honors journey, this was a class that was new to the catalog and to the honors curriculum this semester. It was a reading-and-discussion-based class that explored the origins and validity of knowledge. An interesting class as it was a completely different course from all of the other classes I was enrolled in, HON 101 is quite unique in its structure and content.

HON 252: Honors in Arts & Creativity: Shakespeare Aloud

One of my two required honors seminars, and also a fulfillment of the Arts & Creativity UK core requirement, this class was a gem that killed two birds with one stone. My professor was so knowledgeable about the two plays we explored, King Lear and Twelfth Night, that I was convinced he had memorized them. This class was not difficult by any means, but still taught me so much about drama, theater, and Elizabethan literature.

CIS 112: Accelerated Communication & Composition

At UK, you can either take two semesters of the comp & com requirement, or, if you are exceptionally strong in English, you can get placed in the accelerated version, CIS 112, to fulfill both requirements simultaneously. This class had several speeches, the last one being an 8-minute TED Talk, which pushed my boundaries a lot. Being a writer, speaking effectively has not been one of my talents and was entirely new to me. There were a few papers also, the final being an 800-word op-ed to be published in a news outlet, complete with research from scholarly journals and dissertations. Perhaps the most unique thing about this course was the service-learning. Students got put into groups of 5, and then those groups would collectively go to an organization to get 10 volunteer hours for the semester. The experiences we had at such organizations were incorporated into several assignments, such as 3 podcasts throughout the semester and a few essays. My group volunteered at the Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning, where I tutored a fourth grade boy in math for free for an hour every week. I loved it so much that I am going to be returning the the Center next semester to continue to help my kid.

B&E 120: Leadership in the Global Marketplace

The first cohort Global Scholars class, B&E 120 was all about leadership. Although I am dropping Global Scholars officially at the end of this semester (see My first semester: the good, the bad, the ugly), this counts as my second honors seminar. In this class, we learned theories, models, and components of leadership. The main driver of this course was the service project that we, in groups of 5, had to create, organize, and execute ourselves. My group went to the most underprivileged elementary school in Lexington, and made them believe that no matter where they came from, they had the power to be leaders. With our guidance, the school raised over 1600 non-perishables to be donated to the Ronald McDonald House and the Hope Center, a homeless shelter in Lexington.