Juliette Broussard, a Senior at ASH, has been in the Honors Program since sophomore year.  Although she has studied distinct subtopics each year, all of Juliette's research has centered around the subject of culture.  As a first-year Honors student, she participated in the Trust Your Crazy Ideas Challenge.  Although her main focus in the Honors Program has been cultural, she partnered with others to create a prototype of an app idea, called The Recruiter.  Designed to aid student athletes in the recruitment process, the app was meant to make it easier for students to create resumes, get matched to a recruiter, and become more visible to colleges.  She says that this work is what introduced her to the vigor of the Honors Program.

More importantly, however, this was the same year that Juliette discovered her ardor for cultural studies as she researched Native American spirituality. Growing up and searching for arrowheads in the woods near her house, Juliette knew that there was a strong history of Native American culture in Louisiana, but she wanted to know more.  Before coming to Sacred Heart, Juliette was asked to write an essay on a topic of her choice.  She wrote about her desire to learn more about the culture of Native Americans that was so present in Louisiana history, which she eventually capitalized on.  Through her research, she found that it is unjust to encompass Native American spirituality as a whole because each tribe has various and uniquely different beliefs and practices.  She says, 

There is no one correct way to look at culture, especially Native American culture; culture is individualized by the people.

Continuing wiht the topic of culture, Juliette researched American music and culture in the 1960s and 1970s throughout her Junior year.  A lover of music, she claims that she could talk about it forever, which is shy she chose to study this topic.  Similar to her experience with Native American culture, she wanted to truly be interested in the subject she would be researching, especially since it involves a massive commitment for an entire school year.  She engrossed herself in learning about the counterculture movement and the influence that it and musicians have on each other.  She came to understand that the values of both youth and music are interconnected during any era- the sixties and seventies being a good example of this. Juliette's major takeway from this was that, 

A good way to look at the values of a culture is to look at the music that was made during those decades."

Further embracing the arts, she was also chosen to enter into the Poetry Out Loud  competition.  She performed the poems, "The Wish, by a Young Lady" by Laetitia Pilkington and "Midnight Office" by Cynthia Cruz in front of a live audience.  This is another example of the hOnors program allowing Juliette to be comfortable with embracing her artistic inclinations publicly.

- Lelia Venable, '23, Editor