A Unique Learning Mindset

Story by Daisy Arvonen

Being an Honors student can change your life, according to Adam Bonny. Originally from Geneva, Switzerland, Bonny had planned to attend an engineering school there. Although the prospects looked great, he felt that God was calling him to go to BYU instead. “And I’m glad I did,” Bonny said, who is now a senior studying film. “Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing this because I can’t do this at an engineering school.” He also wouldn’t have found the Honors Program, and never would have taken HONRS 227: Deception in Film and TV, which changed the course of his studies.

Bonny said he liked all of his Unexpected Connections courses, but HONRS 227 was his favorite. “Honestly, HONRS 227 is the one that kind of changed my life,” he admitted. At the end of the semester, one of the professors in the class asked him if he had ever thought about studying film. He decided to start taking some classes for the minor. More and more people started to ask him if he ever considered being a film major. “And like after the 10th person I was like, okay, maybe I should consider doing the film major because if everyone keeps telling me about it, there's probably something to it,” Bonny said.

Bonny’s Leadership Development Project for Honors was inspired by this class as well. Drs. Hansen and Parkin had taught about spiritual fallacies, tricks that Satan uses to deceive us. Under the direction of these professors, Bonny created a website called Satan's Playbook, which has resources for people to learn about and be prepared to counteract spiritual fallacies. These principles are taught through games, and the website even has printable cards.

For his Honors thesis, Bonny is writing articles addressing 50 of the most common questions that film students have in an effort to eliminate unnecessary steps in the film production process. Bonny explained that in the film program, students change roles in each project they do so that they can gain expertise in different areas. “But the problem is that means that everybody is a novice every time,” Bonny explained. “And you always make the same mistakes. A lot of this stuff that you need to know is not written down.” Bonny hopes to make a wiki website for the articles he writes so that film students at BYU and other universities can easily find answers to their questions and ease the process of film production.

Bonny is also working to help restore Church videos through the BYU Motion Picture Studio, now LDS Motion Picture Studio, and is currently restoring a 1950s film called How Near to the Angels. Bonny’s job is to clean up the film, making the images sharper and correcting color. Next semester, once the movie is restored, it will premiere in the BYU Library.

The interdisciplinary approach of the Honors Program helped Bonny create a unique learning mindset, and now that he is preparing for graduate school, he is using these Honors projects as a way to improve his applications. “I think it’s the multidisciplinary push that is the biggest thing for me,” he explained. “That kind of change of mindset that is ingrained in the Honors Program from the very first class that you have to take was really helpful in helping make classes more interesting.” Bonny said the Honors Program has given him opportunities to do challenging projects that he was interested in, that pushed him out of his comfort zone, preparing him for further education. “If you want to do grad school, the Honors Program prepares you a lot in unintended ways, because you have to do so many things that you wouldn’t do otherwise,” he said. “And then it helps you to show people that you’re curious and willing to try things that are hard.”

His biggest advice to Honors students is to “pick projects that are interesting to them, not just something that meets the requirements, but something that they actually want to think about because it makes it a lot more interesting.” The projects and classes Bonny has completed in Honors have not only been interesting to him, but have changed his life. His decision to study at BYU and become an Honors student has in his words “changed my program, my career path, where I’m potentially going to end up living, and I wouldn’t have had that without the Honors Program.”