My freshman and sophomore year were completed at Southside Community College through the Governor’s School program provided through my high school. This program really challenged me and pushed me to excel while preparing me for the college courses at Longwood.

When I arrived at Longwood University, I was a junior. I was accepted into the Honors College and continued to push myself academically. I worked a full time job while doing so, but I was up for the challenge and knew that the Longwood community was there to support me. During this year, I took Honors Children’s Literature, where I wrote a major research article for the class about how certain children’s books were important to the cognitive and social development of children. This project was out of my comfort zone, as I had never written a research article before. I felt very proud of this accomplishment, and empowered to write more research articles in the upcoming year. I presented this research at the National Collegiate Honors Council’s annual conference held in November, which was an amazing experience.

I currently have enhanced two courses for the fall semester of my senior year: Health and P.E. for the Classroom Teacher and Virginia Studies. For these courses, I will be researching the effects of students with epilepsy in the classroom for the kinesiology class, and the Bizarre plantation and Israel’s Hill that are important to Farmville’s history.