As a Reaud Honors College student, you are among the brightest students a university has to offer. Your propensity for being goal-focused and achievement-oriented, however, tends to put you in a future-oriented stance that may result in social isolation. The First Year Honors Experience is a holistic journey of self-reflection, empowerment, and communication that will help you gain an appreciation for the mantra, “Think. Feel. Be.”

In seven monthly discussions, your honors peers and you will work together to learn the importance of language, self-perception, agency, self-talk, self-presentation, interpersonal communication, and critical thinking to build a vibrant, connected honors community filled with students who are not just deep thinkers in their respective fields, but also students who appreciate contemplation as a form of connection to others that results in the ability to “be” comfortable in the present.

Your experience will be divided into the following sections, each leading into the next and guided by a specific quote. We are excited to mentor you on this journey of deciphering the story of you and how to best empower yourself as you discover your place in the world.  

AUGUST 31, 2023

Did You Really Just Say That? The Power of Language

Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed.

– Abraham Joshua Heschel (Polish-American rabbi)

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

Who Am I? Self and Symbolic Interactionism

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

– George Bernard Shaw (Irish playwright, critic, and political activist)

OCTOBER 26, 2023

Say It Loud: Finding Your Voice in the Classroom

Find your own voice and use it. Use your own voice and find it.

– Jayne Cortez (African-American poet, activist, small press publisher, and spoken word performance artist)

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

The Story of You: Embodied Narratives

If you don’t know yourself, you don’t know your nature. If you don’t know your nature, you don’t know where to exist. By knowing your nature, knowing yourself, you know what to be and how to live. And that only comes from knowledge of self, knowing yourself.

– RZA (African-American rapper, actor, filmmaker, and record producer)

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

It’s Showtime! The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Choose your self-presentations carefully, for what starts out as a mask may become your face.

– Erving Goffman (Canadian-American sociologist)

MARCH 26, 2024

The We in I: Interpersonal Communication and the Relational Being

Ideas emerge from joint thinking, from significant conversations, and from sustained, shared struggles to achieve new insights by partners in thought.

– Kenneth J. Gergen (American psychologist)

APRIL 26, 2024

Getting Your Money’s Worth: Critical Thinking in Honors

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

- Aristotle (Greek philosopher)