Make Up Blog #14

So about a week ago I wrote this:
"My freshman year, I could classify a Shakespearean sonnet, but I couldn’t begin to write a personal narrative. I took all the right classes and kept my grades perfect. I thought I was supposed to do this in high school; little did I realize that I concentrated on schooling, not education. I had facts, figures, and a quota of high school experiences, but I hadn’t even begun to figure out who I was. Then came the class where schooling and education meshed into one. My junior AP English class, taught by a teacher rumored to eat students, who taught real lessons which extended outside a textbook. We learned a lot that year: the Vietnam War, September 11^th, and modern writing in O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; rhetorical devices with a photo scavenger hunt through everyday life; and essay writing through the essay-a-week method in order to strengthen our writing skills. All of this seemed like a normal English class until I realized the more I did, the more it shaped me. This class changed how I viewed being “educated;” I realized I wasn’t. I submitted myself to schooling, stunted by never applying my learning. This teacher changed that, forcing growth. I think this idea of “schooling” versus “education” needs to be addressed, for students are sucked into the syphon of academics only, never seeing there’s more to life than trig or protractors or dissecting cats or Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492 and that “to be or not to be” is not the only question or any of the other exhausting things that plague us. Students need to realize that if we continue to let schooling get in the way of education, we will stagnate: lacking in learning and inadequate in edification."

It was my 300 word essay that would hopefully grant me entrance into the Honors college at NKU. And it did.
I sent it off the afternoon after writing it (and having Egan cut 157 words from it and yell at me for having too many "thats" and repeatedly saying that "in1492" was not needed even though it totally and completely WAS!) and the next morning they sent me an email saying the standard "Thank you for your submission, we will consider it and get back to you with our decision in 2-3 weeks."

Fastforward 8 hours and I get another email form NKU.

"Dear Loralyn, Congratulations!!"

I got really excited after reading that and kind of jumped to the fact that I did get into honors program, but then realized I should keep reading in case it was like "Congratulations! We caught the last of the rabid raccoons on campus, so no worries about getting rabies in the Fall of 2013, well unless you just go play with wild animals on your own time, but then thats your fault not ours so.... CONGRATULATIONS!!"

So I did read on.

"We are pleased to offer you a spot in the Honors Program for Fall 2013."

There may still be rabid raccoons on campus, but hey I'm in the Honors Program.

Who's excited for classes about "amusement parks in america," classes that take "weekly and biweekly field trips" around Cincinatti, and classes with no tests?

Me. Because Fall of 2013 I will be at NKU, Honors Program.