Devyn Gilbert

Nadra Fredj

Honors 100

12/3/2023

So far, I’ve really enjoyed going to UW. I especially like the Honors Program because the

small class sizes allow me to participate more which helps me stay engaged in class and

understand the texts we read to a much greater extent. One thing that I didn’t expect about

college, though, was how much reading and how little writing I would be doing. I read a

minimum of 350 pages a week, and I’ve only written 3 essays this entire quarter. What surprised

me even more was that I don’t particularly mind it that way. In high school, I hated reading for

school with a passion. Even if I liked the book, I fumed with rage and wilted in agony at the idea

of having to read it for a class. But now I feel completely fine about reading 200 pages in a day

for school. Sometimes it’s a little boring, I admit, but I don’t cry from stress about it the way I

did in high school. In fact, I sometimes wish we wrote more essays, even if I had to spend more

time writing them on top of doing my readings. I think I’d like to try to take more writing based

courses in the future.

On the topic of what I’d like to explore in the future, I’d also like to try to join an RSO

next quarter. I need to improve my time management because I’ve been so overscheduled doing

schoolwork that I haven’t really been able to explore other resources and activities like RSO’s

and networking. Hopefully, over the break I’ll be able to spend more time researching RSO’s

related to my major and email some groups to see about joining. I get a lot of emails from JSIS

about the Euro club, so I’m considering joining that, especially since Europe is one of my

regions of interest. I’d like to be able to join one RSO for my career and education and one RSO
for fun. Since I joined UW, I’ve been really interested in joining the archery club, so I might

choose that as my fun RSO. I also saw an auction for the art club and I’ve never had time to take

an art class, but I really like to paint, so I might choose that instead. There are so many options,

so it can be a little overwhelming, but I think that once I work an RSO into my schedule, I’ll feel

like I’m getting a lot more out of college. It also seems like a good way to build community and

I’ve had a bit of a hard time doing that since most of my classes are lectures. I’m mostly just

friends with my roommates and I’d like to have some friends who don’t live with me.

Overall, I’m feeling pretty confident about moving forward in honors and college in

general. I have some concerns about my grades and time management, though. The way grading

works in college is vastly different from how it works in highschool, so it was kind of a shock to

see how quickly and permanently my grades can drop since there are so few assignments. I’ve

always been a bit of an overachiever, as well, so it’s difficult for me to come to terms with the

fact that I’m not always going to be able to get a 4.0 and it’s not a helpful expectation for myself.

It’s a lot more useful to try to balance my grades with RSO’s, networking, and other things that

will help my career. I just need to figure out what an appropriate overall GPA is because I’ve

always thought anything less than a 4.0 is inadequate for me, so I don’t know what the standard

really is. However, I feel like I’m learning a lot in my classes, so I think that’s a good sign that

even if I don’t have a perfect grade, I’m still doing ok because I understand the material.

Although college is quite different from high school, I still feel like I’m doing fairly well and like

it’s useful for me to be at UW. I think that once I settle in more and get used to how college

works and what the expectation is of me I’ll be able to further grow my community and

education in class as well as outside of it.