Looking Back at Honors

Throughout my four years here at Indiana University Indianapolis, I have created many Honors projects and have had many experiences that I am proud of and have learned from.  They have taught me more about my major, provided me a chance to work on skills that I can apply to my career, and gave me the opportunity to find myself as an undergraduate in the Honors College.  As shown in my Showcase Artifacts, I have grown quite a bit since starting school here and have expressed how the Honors experience has helped me to do so.

One of these projects that I completed for Honors credit was in the Spring of 2024 in Cell Biology, taught by Dr. Meghan Barrett.  She had many suggestions for Honors projects that we could complete, with one of them looking into the cellular biology of your pet.  I have a parrot, so I thought that would be an interesting pitch.  She informed me about the kidneys of birds, and how they are very different from our own, so I decided to focus on bird kidneys at the cellular level.  I came up with the idea to make an infographic on my topic and got creative when designing it.  I have always been a creative person so I was excited to be able to create something in the realm of biology that showcased those skills.

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Through this project, I gained a great relationship with Meghan and ended up being a teaching assistant for her when she asked me to join her Cell Biology Pedagogy class.  I was able to work on communication because of this, since I needed to communicate with her about the questions I had about the project as well as receiving approval and critiques on what to improve about it.  Throughout the whole experience, I felt like I really grew as a learner, meeting the IUI Honors College goals.  I know nothing about the anatomy of humans, let alone a bird, so I had to start with baby steps in this research, looking into the basic functions for both.  It taught me how to digest texts that were hard to understand, breaking them down into simple phrases that a grade-schooler could comprehend.  This also tied into elevating my problem solving skills, since I needed figure out how to word the texts in a way I could understand and reproduce on an infographic.  Working on my problem solving and communication skills with this project clearly met the IUI Honors College goals.

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I have always loved animals, so doing this project felt exciting to me.  I was learning something new about a type of animal that I love.  Growing up I often watched the Irwin family, the Kratt Brothers, Jane Goodall, and plenty more.  I think that that ignited my love for biology and pushed me towards the science route.  While I ended up in forensic science, I am double majoring in biology, and I value the other fields that I will not be going into.  Despite not being forensics related, completing any biological research is helpful and can be applied to forensic biology.  Wildlife forensics is an incredible field that I have looked into in the past and, if I were to ever go that route, knowing how to read articles involving animal specimens and seeing how they differ from us is incredibly important not just to that field, but to appreciate our environment as a whole.

Another experience I had that truly allowed me to grow and learn was my study abroad in South Korea.  Health and Behavioral Health Care in a Global Context: Interprofessional Collaboration Practice included two weeks in South Korea visiting various healthcare facilities.  We had plenty of opportunities to learn more about the culture and beauty of the country while also understanding the how their healthcare system worked.  From places that created gadgets to assist the elderly, to facilities made to help North Korean defectors find their place in the South, South Korea had a unique and extensive healthcare system.  As a forensic major who is not planning on working in the healthcare system, I still found ways to connect what I was learning back to the forensics field and slowly began to understand how I could incorporate my new skills into it.

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This was very much an international and cultural experience, meeting the IUI Honors College goals.  New food, new culture, new everything on a continent I had never been to before.  The people I got to experience this all with were amazing and we all had different majors and interests.  This is where the interprofessional collaboration came in.  Despite being very different, we all needed to communicate, work through problems together, and navigate the new country as one, meeting the IUI Honors College goals.  Despite not going into a healthcare career, being able to navigate and work alongside healthcare workers and the system can be an important part of the job.  Not only does the forensic nursing field exist, forensic biologists also get some of our samples directly from the healthcare system.  Understanding the behind the scenes work of the system can only help me in my future career.  I will also meet people from all walks of life in my career and I feel that it is important to be able to work with someone from any major and background, just like I did with my group while out of the United States.

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I gained so much independence throughout this trip, as it was my first trip without my family.  I learned how to navigate the subway and bus system, communicated in a new language, and traveled to tons of new places with my newly made friends.  It was thanks to the Honors stipend for studying abroad, that I even planned on studying abroad in the first place.  Hearing my fellow Honors college students talk about their study abroad experiences really left me feeling excited and wanting to go on an adventure of my own.  I got to experience so much and see the differences between our healthcare in the United States and South Korea, while also learning how to apply my interprofessional collaboration skills to my own field.