Each academic semester, Florida State University's Honors Program recognizes graduating seniors who have distinguished themselves by completing three exceptional academic achievements, earning the distinction of Outstanding Senior Scholar:

• Maintaining a 3.9 GPA or higher, graduating Summa Cum Laude;
• Challenging themselves and enriching their education by completing the University Honors Program, in which they completed a minimum of 18 Honors points;
• Earning Honors in their Major by completing a research or creative project.

To achieve any of these distinctions is a noteworthy accomplishment; achieving all three is a rarity. Meghan Gilmore, who graduated in Spring 2023 with dual bachelor's degree in English-Creative Writing and Interdisciplinary Humanities, earned a well-deserved spot on this semester's list.

FSU awarded honors medallions to a total of 331 high-achieving graduates during a May 1 ceremony at Ruby Diamond Concert Hall. In addition to the Outstanding Senior Scholar honor, Gilmore is an FSU Presidential Scholar, Class of 2023 and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. She also won these English department writing awards: the 2023 Cody Harris Allen Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Writing (first runner-up); the 2023 Steven D. Schloff Undergraduate Creative Writing Award for Fiction; and the 2023 George and Ruth Yost Award for Best Personal Essay. 

Q&A WITH MEGHAN GILMORE

(Conducted via email)

How do you think earning the Outstanding Senior Scholar recognition will benefit you as you pursue your post-undergraduate endeavors?

Although the best part of graduation was being able to share the same achievement—making it through our undergraduate degrees—with hundreds of other students, I will say that my Outstanding Senior Scholar recognition feels like a reminder of how much I learned to persevere through at Florida State. Sometimes it is easy to underrate my own abilities; the work that I put in can end up taken for granted. Understanding that I finished my undergraduate career with a distinction shared by only 22 of my peers helps me understand the scope of my academic experience. Going forward, this will encourage me to seek out new challenges and see how much more I can handle!

The Honors site reads that students need to “complete three exceptional academic achievements.” How did you plan your semesters to tailor your time to these program requirements?

The most unusual decision that I made during the completion of the Outstanding Senior Scholar’s requisite achievements was starting the Honors Thesis process in the spring of my sophomore year. It is common among undergraduates to wait until their senior years to write and defend their theses, but by carrying out this process during my third year at FSU, I was able to focus on other areas in my final year. The Honors in the Major Program is transformative, and I noticed a distinct difference in my capabilities as a student after the year-long process; it pushed me to excel academically beyond my work with research.

Could you please describe the inspiration behind your honors thesis project and give a summary description of the contents? Please discuss working with your project director.

Creative research was alien to me before I started the Honors in the Major Program, but it has been one of the most rewarding discoveries of my academic career. With guidance from my thesis director, English Assistant Professor Ravi Howard, who has an incredible breadth of knowledge about creative nonfiction, I ended up writing a series of personal essays curated to capture my experiences growing up as a biracial Black woman in the southern United States. Most of my research revolved around a review of existing biracial literature and new discourses about ethical and effective ways to represent marginalized populations through creative projects, which allowed me to produce an entry into the genre that I felt more updated for the 21st century. This project ended up being deeply personal for me, but it was also deeply empowering to learn how to control my own life narrative.

Did you have any downsides or struggles when completing the three exceptional academic achievements and how did you overcome them?

There were absolutely times, especially during my thesis defense year, where my workload became overwhelming. Working a job at the same time made that more difficult. I was fortunate enough to have the support of the Presidential Scholars program, which gave me more freedom to focus on my research—and to keep my grades from plummeting, too! Additionally, the personal nature of my work was a heavy burden sometimes, but that burden was ultimately cathartic.

What advice would you give to any English students who want to earn the Outstanding Senior Scholar achievement?

My advice is to make the program work for you! As a first-year student, I felt so disinterested in research that I wrote off Outstanding Senior Scholar recognition entirely. Once I discovered creative research—and, equally important, the creativity encouraged in Honors in the Major students by the faculty in the English department—everything I considered to be a constraint just fell away. The same is true of the Honors Program. The care that the Honors Program takes to ensure that students of all disciplines can seek a more holistic education means that Honors coursework is augmentative, not prescriptive. To put it simply: if something doesn’t seem to fit you, make it fit.

What plans do you have for post-graduation?

This fall, I’m running away to work as an au pair with a family in Luxembourg. Law school is in the cards for me soon, but not right now! So much of the past four years of my life—and another dozen or so before that—have been dedicated to student-hood. Now it’s time to learn more about myself, and about the world; I know doing so will make me a better writer, lawyer, and human being in general. And yes, a better student, too—when it’s time for that again.

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