Honors Blog #4:

I am glad that I chose to be an honors student for the 2010-2011 school year first semester because I really gained some important skills and opportunities from being in honors. I have noticed lately that my writing has improved greatly since the beginning of the school year and I believe that a large portion of the reason for that is because of all of the Honors reading and Honors writing that I have been completing.

The reading I have been completing has been of all classic and historical novels which has expanded my knowledge on not only Humanities related topics, but other topics as well and the reading has also (most likely) improved my writing just because I was absorbing and unconsciously learning new vocabulary and writing techniques/styles that was being used throughout the books that I read.

The Honors writing I had to complete was not that much extra, but it was an additional amount of writing that I had to do. This writing helped me because it provided additional practice for applying the writing skills that I learned in class and it also usually required some additional research to be done on the certain topic that the Honors Blog was about for that particular night.

If I were to do this past Honors semester over again I would probably access after school extra help from Randy more often for topics that didn't make sense to my that we were learning about or assignment that were particularly challenging for me. This is because while I did access the office hours that were available to me on occasion I still feel like I would have had a less stressful time completing my work for English Honors and would have completed a better quality of work had I gone in on my own time more frequently.

My goals for English Honors in the second semester would be that first of all I hope to keep a solid A in my honors class by ensuring that I always turn my assignments in and to go in for office hours more often.

My grade for the first semester started out strong but then as the semester continued on my grade dropped from and A+ to a B-, but luckily I have been able to pull my grade up from a B- to a B+ so far, but I would have still much have rathered an A. I think that the reason for this was that I would not stay completely on top of my assignments and writer them down every second that I heard something additional that I had to do. I would also just forget or not double check with my teacher that he saw my homework and marked me as having it complete and on time.

As I said previously I came to office hours a few times for English but I still did not fully take advantage of the office hours being available to me. If I had gone in for office hours more often I think that my work would have turned out better and I would have improved my understanding of all the topics slightly as well.

The history that I am interested in is any kind of Art History and I also like learning about Philosophy and philosophers and their beliefs. I also enjoy learning about the history of religions, but considering this year the main focus is on American History I would say that I would like to learn about the different cultural groups or cults in America like the Klu Klux Klan because I am interested also in anything culture related. I feel that this past first semester in Honors English has relatively been a success and I am looking forward to continuing on and raising my standard in the coming semester.