Honors Experiences | Learningportfolio

Experience 1 - Sumac + Sage Web Development

During this self-designed experience, I developed a website for my mom’s business, in which she provides vegan cooking instruction experiences. I recognized that her business was growing, and she needed a place to advertise her services, so I designed and built a website using HTML and CSS. Some of my goals for this project were to:

Challenge my creativity to design a website that is not only functional, but also engaging to look at and scroll through.
Go beyond my current understanding of HTML/CSS when developing this website.

With this project, I wanted to grow my web development skills as well as have a personal project to put on my resume. As an information technology major, having proof of personal projects is important when job searching. I learned a lot about project management during this experience. I had never directly interfaced with a client prior to this experience, so it was interesting to learn just how much you may need to rely on clients during a process. I expanded my ability to be self-driven; this project was run solely by myself, so I had to keep myself on track. I believe that I completed my goals. I was able to think creatively for an engaging user experience, and I learned new skills within the web development field.

You can access the website at sagebushstone.github.io/home (content still in progress), and you can view my ongoing journal by clicking here.

Experience 2 - Exploring Leadership Honors Seminar

During this Honors seminar, I learned about different leadership theories. I also had the opportunity to apply them in the real world with the service learning project. During this project, I and my team of four worked to put on the annual IT Intern Summit, a conference for college and high school interns in the Cincinnati region.

I was able to learn a lot about leadership and the execution of a project from start to finish through this service learning project. Because I was the person who connected the team with the nonprofit affiliated with the Summit, I naturally took on a leadership role. Overall, the Summit went extremely well, a testament to the work that we put in.

I also participated in group discussions and observed leadership in action during this course, giving me an understanding of other perspectives of leadership and how I might apply it to my own life.

Leadership is critical for Global Citizen Scholars; being able to interact with peers and followers in a way that is transformational, rather than transactional, can be highly influential. Below, you can see a picture of the project management team at the site for the Intern Summit as a representation of our accomplishments.

Experience 3 - Novel Writing

For this self-designed honors experience, I planned to write 30,000 words of a novel/novella. Along the way, I wanted to reflect on character motivations and improve with time management as it pertains to writing. During my experience, I shifted my goals to focus more on “how can each writing project I pursue help me grow as a writer with the ultimate goal of finishing the novella?” 30,000 words is a lot for one project, so I ultimately wrote 6,000 words and have a finished plan of what needs to happen for this story to have a satisfying resolution. I also wrote an 8,000 word story; in the process of this, I learned about character motivation and used it as a proof of concept for the novella. Finally, I wrote a 1,700 word story, a parody of a radio show, as a Christmas present for my mom (see below for the audio recording of myself telling it). I learned about how to manage my time to finish a project under a deadline, and how to write in a different voice than I am accustomed to.

In all of these projects, I reflected on how each made me grow as a writer, and I believe that I learned something new from each of these which I can use to finish my novella. Overall, I have grown as a student and as a Global Citizen Scholar through these writings.

Click the following link to view the audio recording of the parody audio recording (this is the most audience-ready work that I completed in the past few months): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHAAa3W9JFs

Experience 4 - May Festival

This year, I joined the May Festival Chorus, the official chorus for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and resident choir at Music Hall. The May Festival Chorus sings during the annual May Festival at each of four concerts that occur in the span of two weeks. In the weeks leading up to the May Festival, my goals were to improve my interpersonal and time management skills, as well as my technical musical skills.

I certainly believe that I fulfilled these goals. I connected with many people in the months leading up to the May Festival, and I remained disciplined in my self-rehearsal of the pieces. I’ve learned many new things about music that I didn’t previously know from my choral background. Ultimately, I am very happy with how the concerts went.

This experience made me realize that community is critical for being a Global Citizen Scholar. Working in an ensemble-heavy organization, with success being measured on the part of the group rather than the individual, contributed to my new understanding of Global Citizen Scholarship being community-focused.

I have included a couple of pictures below showcasing both myself in front of Musical Hall and on stage with the rest of the Chorus and the CSO.