Hello, and welcome to my portfolio! My name is Mathew Colling, and I am a honors student at Drury University. I am also a double major in Secondary Education and English, with a certificate in Neurodiversity. However, I did not initially come to Drury University to study these topics.

I first came to Drury Universtiy to enter our pre-med program and to go to medical school, hopefully to culminate in a residency as an endocrinologist. Although the notion of helping people brought me preemptive fulfillment, the experience of working in an medical office soon dissuaded. So, before I ever took my first class at Drury University, I realized that I did not know who I wanted to eventually become, or how I wanted to experience the fulfillment of serving a community. Fortunately, Drury University and its Honors Program provided fertile ground for this development.

I decided that college was the perfect opportunity to try new ideas. If one did not work, I was in an ocean of them, so I could always find another. The Honors Department only exaggerated this exciting reality. Eventually, this journey brought me to Education, where I was greeted with topics such as lesson planning, curricular development, equitable assessment, classroom management, and a way to serve other people. I was terrified, but I chose to commit to Education during my first semester. I was given the opportunity to visit my first classroom as a teacher and found this sense of fulfillment as I became a mentor during a brief period of my students' lives. When I had the opportunity to enjoy and analyze powerful stories and performances, I knew that I wanted to continue teaching English. Even after the pandemic started, my memories of these classroom experiences, as well as the promise of future opportunities to teach, helped me as I stayed the course for my new future. As will be demonstrated by the rest of my portfolio, especially my thesis, this decision has and will continue to gleefully follow me as I develop a future for myself.

I would be remiss to limit my report of this future to my academics. During my time at Drury, I have also:

• Published two short stories

• Written a zine's worth of poetry

• Contributed to -

  • 14 live performances

  • 2 short films

• Become (and fell in love with being) a tutor

• Won a total of $2,100 to travel and research social-emotional learning (SEL)

• Asked my best friend to marry me (She said yes!)

Each of these experiences have contributed to the person that I am becoming. Each of the provided artifacts provides a snapshot of where I was at various points, creating a personal history of my time both as an honors student and as a developing mind. I am excited to announce that, although this denotes my apex as an honors student at Drury University, it also denotes the platform from which I will launch into my next chapter.

Thank you for reading through my portfolio, and feel free to contact me at mcolling@drury.edu OR mathewcolling022@gmail.com