Honors Events

As a part of the honors program each student is required to attend at least two honors events a semester. The events are meant to help us bond with fellow honors students and get cultural experiences right on campus. Honestly, the events sounded a little annoying and time consuming in the beginning, and I had very little interest in attending them. Now, I have come to enjoy them and I find them very rewarding. There is a wide variety of options and plenty of events to choose from, so it is pretty easy to find things of interest at a time that works for the student. I have only heard of two people having a difficult time finding an event they can attend and both people were on the dance team. Unfortunately, their schedules just don’t seem to mesh well with the program. So far this semester there has been a movie night, a cartoonist, and a jazz piano player. There will also be a day of service for us to participate in in a few weeks.

Last semester, I attended a kickball game and a picnic. The jazz piano player has been my favorite event so far. I started taking piano lessons this semester through Rockhurst and they have required lots of hard work (much more work than I expected). I thought that because I had taken lessons for a while when I was little that I would be better than I am, but I barely struggle through short, boring pieces like Kumbaya and Jingle Bells. The work I have been doing gave me a great appreciation for the man who came to play for us because last week I get the chance to watch him sit down and produce beautiful music without even any sheet music. It was inspiring. He even taught us a little bit about how jazz music is organized and what makes it different from pop music, classical, and other common genres. It was a nice mental break in the middle of midterm week, but it was still very interesting. I liked it because it was something I will probably never have the opportunity to learn in a classroom or see for free. I’m sure people normally pay quite a bit of money to attend a concert like the one we got to attend for free.