Welcome to the Honors Blog
Hello, JCCC Students, Staff, Faculty, and anyone else who may be reading this.
My name is Sidney Henkensiefken and I am a student at Johnson County but, more importantly, I am an honors student. While that may just sound like a cool label to some, I promise it is much more than that. Honors is my second home, it is how I made friends in college, and it has helped me succeed in more ways than I could imagine.
It was only three short semesters ago that I started college, and it was a huge transition. Sure, a lot of people have to deal with the transition to college at one point in their lives but, you do not know what that will feel and look like until you actually do it. I, like so many others, was scared. I was worried about classes, making friends, and just the adjustment as a whole. This all changed as I chose to do one thing: open a door. Yes, it is very cliche but, literally opening a door and walking through it changed my whole life.
In my first semester of college things obviously looked much different than this semester, I was lucky, there was no COVID-19 and I got to be on campus. I was able to go physically and engage in person in clubs and organizations I was interested in, participate in events, and spend hours in the honors lounge goofing off probably more than I should have been. When we went online it was devastating, but I was lucky to spend the last moments with my friends from honors. Once again I returned to the feeling of starting college, I was anxious for the future.
The solution to my stress came from honors. For me, I was in three honors classes at the time, I continued to go to HSA meetings, talk to the honors team, and communicated with all of the friends I made throughout the previous year. Having this big of a support system made the transition to online easy, and made me only want to be involved more and enrich the lives of others.
So that’s why I’m so happy that I was given the opportunity to be the president of the Honors Student Association (HSA) for this school year! Being a member of HSA and the president I have gotten to meet so many amazing people, and form a community virtually. While it is unfortunate that we are not in person this year, I learned that we can find friends and support each other in the strangest ways.
I hope that after reading this you will see more ways to get involved or use the honors program to your advantage. This blog is just the newest way for you to connect with honors: make the best of it! You can find information about the program, contact us, and you could also start writing for it! Join us! Honors is here for you to succeed, and I hope you will embrace this marvelous opportunity, and become more involved in our community.
