Looking for artifacts for this project has shown me how much I have grown over my time in the Honors Program. I also have seen how much I have accomplished. Sometimes it was difficult to find some artifacts that would accurately show my accomplishment of goals and their specific outcomes, but I could find artifacts I could use. I am glad I could find artifacts because I had not been expecting to take this course and likewise had not been preserving any of my work. There were two cases where I had a specific work in mind for a certain outcome, yet the work had been lost to time.
The Honors Program goals are well defined and help students develop their abilities in critical thinking, community involvement, communication, and diversity. When looking at these goals, I can see how I have grown in these areas. The wide variety of classes challenge me in their own ways while providing me with unique material. Other students challenged me in these classes because of the wide variety of majors. I had other Computer Science students, Finance, Accounting, Writing, Physical Education, and other majors in my classes. Each student brought their own perspectives that used what they learned in their majors and used this to challenge their fellow students. I also got the chance to increase my community involvement which I had not done before I was in the Honors Program. I worked on my communications skills both verbally and with writing in courses like Honors Composition. This communication was on information I never would have covered, like the Human Genome Project, outside of my Honors courses. Diversity awareness was another concept that was found throughout the Honors Program. The different coursework and fellow students again challenge preconceived notions and caused me to take in their views to determine my own.
Being at the end of my collegiate career, creating this portfolio has provided me a great opportunity to look back on the work that I have done while at Minot State. Some of the work I looked at caused me to cringe, but that just showed my growth as a student and as a person. I enjoyed creating this portfolio because it has allowed me to wrap up my time as a student and move forward with my life into my career.