Demystifying Honors: Honors Advocates – Featuring Kaity Holmes

As the application for the Honors Advocate position open up, one of our own advocates, Kaity Holmes, shares her experiences with the position.

My name is Kaity Holmes, and this is my first year as an Honors Advocate. I found out about the position through a friend who had been an advocate last year and was immediately interested! As a junior, I’ve become increasingly disconnected from the incoming DePaul freshman. Although I didn’t think of myself as qualified to give anyone advice at the time, I
thought it would be a great way to reconnect to DePaul’s community this year.

The farther along I got in the advocate training process, the more excited I was to get started. DePaul has so many excellent opportunities that I didn’t discover until I’d been here awhile, and I wanted to do my part to share them with incoming first-year students.

The role of an advocate is to help freshmen in the honor’s program as they start their time at DePaul. We have virtual meetings over the summer, guide them through Honor’s Preview, and host Advocate Hours throughout the quarter to check-in. Before the first virtual meeting in August, I was incredibly nervous. Zoom meetings can be a difficult place to get a group of strangers to engage with each other, but I wanted to try to create a welcoming environment. From the beginning of the meeting, I was blown away by how engaged my group was. We talked about their remaining summer plans and what Discover or Explore classes they were taking. These conversations eased my anxiety and helped to bond our group.

Honors Preview was our first opportunity to meet in person with our group. We were encouraged to work with our honors partners to find opportunities for our groups to get to know each other. My partner was Jessica Correa, and they were so amazing to work with! My mentees were all film majors, and hers were all animation and game design majors, so we wanted to find a way to allow them to work together creatively. Jessica came up with an activity where two people from my group and two from their group would come up with a pitch for a story and present it to everyone. We were both amazed by how creative, detailed, and entertaining each group’s pitches were! Many groups even had drawings of character designs, title cards, and other things that represented their idea. My favorite part was watching the groups connect as they worked on their ideas. Their enthusiasm was contagious, and Jessica and I had so much fun connecting with our groups.

As an Honors Advocate, I have loved seeing my group connect with each other. Their excitement to get to know each other and myself was inspiring! I highly recommend the role of an Honors Advocate for anyone looking to connect with incoming freshmen, enjoys helping others succeed, or is looking for a way to give back to the Honors community.

Are you interested in becoming an Honors Advocate for next year’s freshmen? Applications are now open! Click here