Second Semester Honors Book Club
The second semester Honors Humanities course drastically differed from first semester. It took the form of a book club seminar and project group. Three books were assigned with a minimum of one project to be completed on any of the books. However, if you participated first semester (which I did), you were only required to read two books and complete one project. I read Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, and Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.
Both books were incredibly interesting and I would highly recommend them. Each had different impacts on me, but Half the Sky really caught my attention. This book is basically about all the ways that women are oppressed around the world, and some of the remediation methods of those issues. After reading this I realized how little I actually knew about my own gender. One aspect of this topic that I found very interesting was how a major portion of the developed countries don’t know about all the problems females must deal with. In more developing and third world countries, cruelties such as a rape culture, kidnappings, sex trafficking, and just general disrespect for women are constant troubles, not new, recent events that news stories cover. Therefore, we end up hearing about a new law that was passed or a boat that sank rather than the fact that, in some countries, women have a 1 in 6 chance of being raped before they turn 20. This is one of the MANY injustices mentioned in this book, and taught me that the problems we see on the news are only a small fraction of issues happening around the world.
Overall, I found the second semester Honors program to be much more enjoyable than first semester because it had a variety of topics and more structure. I found this format better for my work ethic because it cuts down on how much I can procrastinate on at a given time. In first semester, there were only recommended guidelines for due dates, but essentially we just had multiple months to complete a number of tasks, and just be prepared for exhibition. What happened in that situation was that I kept prioritizing other things and never got to my work in time to meet the suggested deadlines, resulting in some very stressful days right before the exhibition. In this format, we have stricter deadlines. If we don’t finish the book by a certain time, we won’t be able complete the seminar preparation guide, and then won’t be able to understand the ideas presented in seminar. This results in not only a lower grade, but also a scarcer understanding of the book. This semester format also taught me how to balance Honors work with regular school work, which is a skill I was much in need of.
My project was a joint project with my regular Humanities class’s Take Action Project. Half the Sky was the inspiration for this project, and you can read all about it by clicking the link below.
Both books were incredibly interesting and I would highly recommend them. Each had different impacts on me, but Half the Sky really caught my attention. This book is basically about all the ways that women are oppressed around the world, and some of the remediation methods of those issues. After reading this I realized how little I actually knew about my own gender. One aspect of this topic that I found very interesting was how a major portion of the developed countries don’t know about all the problems females must deal with. In more developing and third world countries, cruelties such as a rape culture, kidnappings, sex trafficking, and just general disrespect for women are constant troubles, not new, recent events that news stories cover. Therefore, we end up hearing about a new law that was passed or a boat that sank rather than the fact that, in some countries, women have a 1 in 6 chance of being raped before they turn 20. This is one of the MANY injustices mentioned in this book, and taught me that the problems we see on the news are only a small fraction of issues happening around the world.
Overall, I found the second semester Honors program to be much more enjoyable than first semester because it had a variety of topics and more structure. I found this format better for my work ethic because it cuts down on how much I can procrastinate on at a given time. In first semester, there were only recommended guidelines for due dates, but essentially we just had multiple months to complete a number of tasks, and just be prepared for exhibition. What happened in that situation was that I kept prioritizing other things and never got to my work in time to meet the suggested deadlines, resulting in some very stressful days right before the exhibition. In this format, we have stricter deadlines. If we don’t finish the book by a certain time, we won’t be able complete the seminar preparation guide, and then won’t be able to understand the ideas presented in seminar. This results in not only a lower grade, but also a scarcer understanding of the book. This semester format also taught me how to balance Honors work with regular school work, which is a skill I was much in need of.
My project was a joint project with my regular Humanities class’s Take Action Project. Half the Sky was the inspiration for this project, and you can read all about it by clicking the link below.
Click Here to learn more about my Half the Sky Project
First Semester Honors Independent Study
Project Reflection
The purpose of this project was to design our own independent study on an event or era in U.S history and connect our research to themes studied in our first semester. I went into this project focusing on money. I had in mind that I wanted to research alternative currencies and analyze studies where money is not a factor in life, but after a very brief period I learned there isn’t a whole lot out there regarding that. Next, keeping the same “money” mindset, I shifted my focus to the stock market…and ran into another bump in the road. As anyone even a little familiar with the stock market knows, the market is extremely complicated. Even though our research on this topic spans over the course of a semester, the stock market would need five times the amount of time to develop adequate comprehension on the topic. Instead, I finally settled on stock market crashes, asking questions such as: Why do they crash in the first place? What have been previous repercussions of stock market crashes? How can we stabilize the market to make for a more secure future?
Now onto the struggles and triumphs of this project. As previously mentioned, this was an independent study project. To anyone unfamiliar with how Honors classes work at Animas High School, this is not an actual class. We have regular humanities class, and then, in addition to that, we have our Honors work. One of the main things I struggled with during this project was time management. Since all our work for this class was outside of actual class time, it was hard to prioritize my stock market research when I knew there were ten other things I needed to do that were much more urgent. Putting this independent study on the back-burner worked for a while, but when you have to rush to finish things, the quality of your work declines. Don’t worry though, I still ended up with a decent project because, after a rough couple months, I got the hang of managing my time for this project. Proof that I’ve learned from my mistakes? I started this reflection TWO whole days before it was due. Compared to what I’ve done in the past, this is a huge improvement. Even though it was a rough journey for a little while, now that I’ve gone through it I feel more prepared for assignments like this that I might encounter in college.
If I could go back in time and refine my project further, I would do just that- refine it. Since I was always pressed for time, refining my work became a thing of the past. I would love to go back and put more quality into my work and make it beautiful. Specifically, I would like to change the format of my art piece (pictured above). I would alter it so it was more creative, interesting, and spoke for its self so even if I’m not present, people would understand my perspective. Also, I would come up with more relative research questions. When I began the project with my original research idea, I wrote a proposal for it and created research questions. However, after I changed it, I never had to create another proposal or more research questions. Even though it seemed fine at the time, months later it left me with little guidance on what my synthesis paper would revolve around. My revision would be to go back in time and WRITE SOME RESEARCH QUESTIONS. A simple task that will save me from stress later on.
If you’re reading this looking for guidance on your own independent study, I have a few words of advice you should definitely follow: 1. Manage your time wisely. 2. Manage your time wisely. 3. Don’t cut corners. 4. Manage your time wisely (shocker). Just don’t use the motto, “why do today what you could do tomorrow?” because it WILL come back to bite you in the behind.
Now onto the struggles and triumphs of this project. As previously mentioned, this was an independent study project. To anyone unfamiliar with how Honors classes work at Animas High School, this is not an actual class. We have regular humanities class, and then, in addition to that, we have our Honors work. One of the main things I struggled with during this project was time management. Since all our work for this class was outside of actual class time, it was hard to prioritize my stock market research when I knew there were ten other things I needed to do that were much more urgent. Putting this independent study on the back-burner worked for a while, but when you have to rush to finish things, the quality of your work declines. Don’t worry though, I still ended up with a decent project because, after a rough couple months, I got the hang of managing my time for this project. Proof that I’ve learned from my mistakes? I started this reflection TWO whole days before it was due. Compared to what I’ve done in the past, this is a huge improvement. Even though it was a rough journey for a little while, now that I’ve gone through it I feel more prepared for assignments like this that I might encounter in college.
If I could go back in time and refine my project further, I would do just that- refine it. Since I was always pressed for time, refining my work became a thing of the past. I would love to go back and put more quality into my work and make it beautiful. Specifically, I would like to change the format of my art piece (pictured above). I would alter it so it was more creative, interesting, and spoke for its self so even if I’m not present, people would understand my perspective. Also, I would come up with more relative research questions. When I began the project with my original research idea, I wrote a proposal for it and created research questions. However, after I changed it, I never had to create another proposal or more research questions. Even though it seemed fine at the time, months later it left me with little guidance on what my synthesis paper would revolve around. My revision would be to go back in time and WRITE SOME RESEARCH QUESTIONS. A simple task that will save me from stress later on.
If you’re reading this looking for guidance on your own independent study, I have a few words of advice you should definitely follow: 1. Manage your time wisely. 2. Manage your time wisely. 3. Don’t cut corners. 4. Manage your time wisely (shocker). Just don’t use the motto, “why do today what you could do tomorrow?” because it WILL come back to bite you in the behind.