Happiness Project
. In this project we studied happiness. This project was one of the more relaxed projects and that was perfect to have it at the end of the year. We started off by reading Brave New World and we talked how their society was not happy. Then we did more internal research on happiness to write your essay and then we did an art piece to make us happy.
The Idea of Happiness
The dictionary definition of happy is “Feeling pleasure and enjoyment because of your life, situation, etc.” The common misperception of happiness is that one has to work hard to get to it and that it is virtual destination point. This idea is false. Happiness is inside of everyone and it is our decision to be happy or not. External situations do not affect our happiness despite our being socialized to think this is true. In fact, the pursuit of happiness is hindering us as a human race to be happy. “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” Omar Khayyam. The idea of pursuing something suggests that thing or object will be obtained in the future. So when we are focusing on being happy in the future, then we are ignoring being happy now. Each of us can only truly live in the present moment and so that is the time to be happy, not the future. I would like to make it clear that I have no qualms with being happy, but I disagree with how we have been trying to be happy. Happiness is a weird concept to understand, but the main idea of being happy, or feeling “up,” in our lives is to have downs in order to compare them to the ups. It is in our nature to compare one thing to another. Despite my own struggles in understanding happiness, I do believe that we humans need to focus on a few key things to find the happiness inside of us. We need to find meaning in our life to find our happiness, we need to find flow in the activities we do, and we need to, as a nation, do a better job at balancing out work time with our leisure time, all of these steps will bring out the happiness from within ourselves.
In life we strive to find meaning in what we are doing and hope to find meaning in the things we love to do. It turns out that finding meaning in our lives can help us find the happiness within us. In the article, There’s More to Life Than Being Happy published by The Atlantic, the author Emily Esfahani Smith touched on the idea that a meaningful life is almost more important than a happy life. She stated that a meaningful life comes when we sacrifice or give another something and a happy life is to take. I don’t agree with the statement. I believe that both are important to have the human experience. There needs to be a balance of receiving and giving to experience both of these worlds. Also, both of these forms of life create each other. If I were to give my mom a diamond necklace out of the blue, my mom would be experiencing a happy life and I would be experiencing a meaningful life. I believe in our modern society we confuse the concepts of “having meaning” and “being happy.” I believe that humans need to work on balancing out the amount we are happy and the amount that we experience a meaningful life. Another way to have a meaningful life is to do something that matters and that is important to us personaly important. A great example of the benefit of a meaningful life is when I am, oddly enough, doing school work. I can see the meaning in many of the projects that we are doing at Animas. For example, this project that I am writing this essay for is meaningful to me. It is very important that we humans understand happiness and that we know how to find happiness within ourselves. This project has helped me find happiness. Overall, finding meaning in life may not directly help us find happiness, but it will lead us in the right direction.
Finding happiness in ourselves can be summed up in one word: flow. Flow is a powerful state of being that comes in different forms and appears in different areas. In a TED talk called Flow: The Secret to Happiness, the speaker states that in the experience of flow most complex tasks become effortless. Someone may experience flow while running or while playing music; someone else might experience flow while solving a difficult math problem. Flow is an undesirable experience that many worship, its hard to explain, but the feeling is worth a thousand words. This is what most athletes call “being in “the zone.”” Happiness and flow are tied together by scientific research and evidence. When a person is experiencing this flow, his or her brain releases a “drug” called dopamine, which makes the person happy. Our bodies naturally have ups and downs and this flow state of mind helps our bodies pull out the happiness within us. Flow only comes when a person is doing what she loves to do. Over my whole life I have participated in many different sports and activities, experiencing this flow from a very young age. I feel joy every time I do something active even if I am not experiencing flow. Now that may be different for someone else. Another person may like to play board games or cook. If someone trains his body to be happy by using flow to help his body release dopamine, he will be happier. This is a lot easier said than done, but if someone figures out how to use his body and the resources in himself to be happier, then he will realize that he has the power to be happy.
Our world has solicited us to think that the more money we have the happier we are. The truth is that money does not help us to be happier. In nations like Belgium, governing officials have figured out that balancing work time and leisure time truly improves their citizens’ happiness. The things that make a person happy are spending time with those who mean something to him or her. A recent survey done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics breaks down the amount of hours we do different activities stats “For example, the chart above shows how employed persons ages 25 to 54, who live in households with children under 18, spent their time on an average workday. These individuals spent an average of 8.7 hours working or in work-related activities, 7.7 hours sleeping, 2.5 hours doing leisure and sports activities, and 1.3 hours caring for others, including children.” All of these numbers are not helping us find our happiness. We spend more time working than we do sleeping and we only spend 2.5 hours relaxing. Now these hours may be different than how your day usually plays, out but the truth is that American's have their priorities on the wrong things to make us happy. There have been theories that we only get 3-4 hours of work done in 8 hours but there are not behind in their work. There are meeting all the goals assigned to them. So why are we forcing them to stay at work and not doing anything. Americans think the more we work the more money we get and the happier we are. We need to have a system where we get the same amount of work done but we don't have to stay at work once we get it all done and then we can have more time to spend with our families. I would like to put out there that there hasn't been any real studies on this matter but I predict that soon there will be. A great example or the amount of work we get done can be related to me writing this essay. I can tell you that I didn't just write this essay in one day without breaks. I only worked on it about 2 hours a day and to be honest I think that amount of work would have been just about the same as the work done if I tried to do this one project all day. Your brain needs rest and it also needs to be happy. So I propose that we equal out our work to leisure time to spend more time with our family and friends and less time waiting for the long day at work to end.
The pursuit of happiness is a lot like pursuing a good grade in your class. If you are too focused on getting a good grade you won't learn as much and you won't retain the information. If you are too focused on trying to be happy you ignore the opportunity you may have to be happy right now. “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” Omar Khayyam. The pursuit of happiness distracts you from truly being happy. You can only be happy now not in the future but only now. To have happiness is not to find but rather to let it out. I would like to leave you with one last thought with you. Happiness can not be created rather found, you can’t be happy in the future, only now. So put down this paper, close your eyes, and find your happiness within you.
Seminar page:
1. An image of the book cover
2. Your BNW seminar pre-write
3. Your BNW seminar reflection
Planner Time:
The Idea of Happiness
The dictionary definition of happy is “Feeling pleasure and enjoyment because of your life, situation, etc.” The common misperception of happiness is that one has to work hard to get to it and that it is virtual destination point. This idea is false. Happiness is inside of everyone and it is our decision to be happy or not. External situations do not affect our happiness despite our being socialized to think this is true. In fact, the pursuit of happiness is hindering us as a human race to be happy. “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” Omar Khayyam. The idea of pursuing something suggests that thing or object will be obtained in the future. So when we are focusing on being happy in the future, then we are ignoring being happy now. Each of us can only truly live in the present moment and so that is the time to be happy, not the future. I would like to make it clear that I have no qualms with being happy, but I disagree with how we have been trying to be happy. Happiness is a weird concept to understand, but the main idea of being happy, or feeling “up,” in our lives is to have downs in order to compare them to the ups. It is in our nature to compare one thing to another. Despite my own struggles in understanding happiness, I do believe that we humans need to focus on a few key things to find the happiness inside of us. We need to find meaning in our life to find our happiness, we need to find flow in the activities we do, and we need to, as a nation, do a better job at balancing out work time with our leisure time, all of these steps will bring out the happiness from within ourselves.
In life we strive to find meaning in what we are doing and hope to find meaning in the things we love to do. It turns out that finding meaning in our lives can help us find the happiness within us. In the article, There’s More to Life Than Being Happy published by The Atlantic, the author Emily Esfahani Smith touched on the idea that a meaningful life is almost more important than a happy life. She stated that a meaningful life comes when we sacrifice or give another something and a happy life is to take. I don’t agree with the statement. I believe that both are important to have the human experience. There needs to be a balance of receiving and giving to experience both of these worlds. Also, both of these forms of life create each other. If I were to give my mom a diamond necklace out of the blue, my mom would be experiencing a happy life and I would be experiencing a meaningful life. I believe in our modern society we confuse the concepts of “having meaning” and “being happy.” I believe that humans need to work on balancing out the amount we are happy and the amount that we experience a meaningful life. Another way to have a meaningful life is to do something that matters and that is important to us personaly important. A great example of the benefit of a meaningful life is when I am, oddly enough, doing school work. I can see the meaning in many of the projects that we are doing at Animas. For example, this project that I am writing this essay for is meaningful to me. It is very important that we humans understand happiness and that we know how to find happiness within ourselves. This project has helped me find happiness. Overall, finding meaning in life may not directly help us find happiness, but it will lead us in the right direction.
Finding happiness in ourselves can be summed up in one word: flow. Flow is a powerful state of being that comes in different forms and appears in different areas. In a TED talk called Flow: The Secret to Happiness, the speaker states that in the experience of flow most complex tasks become effortless. Someone may experience flow while running or while playing music; someone else might experience flow while solving a difficult math problem. Flow is an undesirable experience that many worship, its hard to explain, but the feeling is worth a thousand words. This is what most athletes call “being in “the zone.”” Happiness and flow are tied together by scientific research and evidence. When a person is experiencing this flow, his or her brain releases a “drug” called dopamine, which makes the person happy. Our bodies naturally have ups and downs and this flow state of mind helps our bodies pull out the happiness within us. Flow only comes when a person is doing what she loves to do. Over my whole life I have participated in many different sports and activities, experiencing this flow from a very young age. I feel joy every time I do something active even if I am not experiencing flow. Now that may be different for someone else. Another person may like to play board games or cook. If someone trains his body to be happy by using flow to help his body release dopamine, he will be happier. This is a lot easier said than done, but if someone figures out how to use his body and the resources in himself to be happier, then he will realize that he has the power to be happy.
Our world has solicited us to think that the more money we have the happier we are. The truth is that money does not help us to be happier. In nations like Belgium, governing officials have figured out that balancing work time and leisure time truly improves their citizens’ happiness. The things that make a person happy are spending time with those who mean something to him or her. A recent survey done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics breaks down the amount of hours we do different activities stats “For example, the chart above shows how employed persons ages 25 to 54, who live in households with children under 18, spent their time on an average workday. These individuals spent an average of 8.7 hours working or in work-related activities, 7.7 hours sleeping, 2.5 hours doing leisure and sports activities, and 1.3 hours caring for others, including children.” All of these numbers are not helping us find our happiness. We spend more time working than we do sleeping and we only spend 2.5 hours relaxing. Now these hours may be different than how your day usually plays, out but the truth is that American's have their priorities on the wrong things to make us happy. There have been theories that we only get 3-4 hours of work done in 8 hours but there are not behind in their work. There are meeting all the goals assigned to them. So why are we forcing them to stay at work and not doing anything. Americans think the more we work the more money we get and the happier we are. We need to have a system where we get the same amount of work done but we don't have to stay at work once we get it all done and then we can have more time to spend with our families. I would like to put out there that there hasn't been any real studies on this matter but I predict that soon there will be. A great example or the amount of work we get done can be related to me writing this essay. I can tell you that I didn't just write this essay in one day without breaks. I only worked on it about 2 hours a day and to be honest I think that amount of work would have been just about the same as the work done if I tried to do this one project all day. Your brain needs rest and it also needs to be happy. So I propose that we equal out our work to leisure time to spend more time with our family and friends and less time waiting for the long day at work to end.
The pursuit of happiness is a lot like pursuing a good grade in your class. If you are too focused on getting a good grade you won't learn as much and you won't retain the information. If you are too focused on trying to be happy you ignore the opportunity you may have to be happy right now. “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” Omar Khayyam. The pursuit of happiness distracts you from truly being happy. You can only be happy now not in the future but only now. To have happiness is not to find but rather to let it out. I would like to leave you with one last thought with you. Happiness can not be created rather found, you can’t be happy in the future, only now. So put down this paper, close your eyes, and find your happiness within you.
Seminar page:
1. An image of the book cover
2. Your BNW seminar pre-write
3. Your BNW seminar reflection
Planner Time:
The Dragon of Happiness
This art piece was very special to me in that fact the I got to hand craft it from a railroad spike. In this piece it shows to me that the way to find happiness is to let it out like a dragon letting out it fire. That is why I made a dragon. I feel that the dragon to me symbolizes happiness. The flames are the happiness coming out of the dragon. This piece brought me happiness while I was making it and every time I look at it. I also believe that In this piece each eye may see different things that's the point of all my artwork. I love giving the viewer what every they think it symbolizes even if it does not relate to my interpretation of the piece.
This art piece was very special to me in that fact the I got to hand craft it from a railroad spike. In this piece it shows to me that the way to find happiness is to let it out like a dragon letting out it fire. That is why I made a dragon. I feel that the dragon to me symbolizes happiness. The flames are the happiness coming out of the dragon. This piece brought me happiness while I was making it and every time I look at it. I also believe that In this piece each eye may see different things that's the point of all my artwork. I love giving the viewer what every they think it symbolizes even if it does not relate to my interpretation of the piece.
The happiness seminar
REACTION:
Over this seminar there were many great point but one still has me thinking. Grace made a comment of the semear that stated how during holidays she would skype with her grandparents because they couldn't travel. I know that is one point doesn't exactly relate to the discussion questions but it really made me think about how we use technology and how we think about it. It seems that in my generation there has been a push bake on technology because we focus on all the negatives of it and not so much all of the positives. In our world we love to point out the negatives in the things we use. I love to hear the positive aspect of a well hated thing such as technology. I think this world needs to look at the positives in live beside dwell on all of the negatives and I guess graces little comment made me really think about this topic more than I usually would have.
SELF-EVALUATION:
This was my first seminar that I have done this year because I missed the last one but I do feel I had growth in diving deeper. My goal in this seminar was to question everything and to really dive deep in the conversation and get to the root of what this book is getting to. I was glad that I did this well and that wanted and did dive deeper. Since 8th grade I feel that I have grown in understanding the text and being prepared before the seminar and having points that don’t only make me look like I understand the topic but more importantly get the group up in the level of understanding in this topic. I am glad that I have grown in these areas and also I have seen some new areas where I need to improve in the seminar.
KEY TAKE-AWAY:
A take away that I took away from the book and from our seminar was the idea of artificial happiness. This point was well made during our seminar touching on the thought of easy happiness. Brave New World drove this point home by having everyone have this almost fake happiness. This really made me think about how to be happy, for reel. I have come to the conclusion that you need to go through pain to know what happiness. I will have this point in the back of my head for the rest of my life because my goal in life is to be happy and I can use this book as a tool to see true happiness.
Over this seminar there were many great point but one still has me thinking. Grace made a comment of the semear that stated how during holidays she would skype with her grandparents because they couldn't travel. I know that is one point doesn't exactly relate to the discussion questions but it really made me think about how we use technology and how we think about it. It seems that in my generation there has been a push bake on technology because we focus on all the negatives of it and not so much all of the positives. In our world we love to point out the negatives in the things we use. I love to hear the positive aspect of a well hated thing such as technology. I think this world needs to look at the positives in live beside dwell on all of the negatives and I guess graces little comment made me really think about this topic more than I usually would have.
SELF-EVALUATION:
This was my first seminar that I have done this year because I missed the last one but I do feel I had growth in diving deeper. My goal in this seminar was to question everything and to really dive deep in the conversation and get to the root of what this book is getting to. I was glad that I did this well and that wanted and did dive deeper. Since 8th grade I feel that I have grown in understanding the text and being prepared before the seminar and having points that don’t only make me look like I understand the topic but more importantly get the group up in the level of understanding in this topic. I am glad that I have grown in these areas and also I have seen some new areas where I need to improve in the seminar.
KEY TAKE-AWAY:
A take away that I took away from the book and from our seminar was the idea of artificial happiness. This point was well made during our seminar touching on the thought of easy happiness. Brave New World drove this point home by having everyone have this almost fake happiness. This really made me think about how to be happy, for reel. I have come to the conclusion that you need to go through pain to know what happiness. I will have this point in the back of my head for the rest of my life because my goal in life is to be happy and I can use this book as a tool to see true happiness.
MUN Project
- In this Project we did a model united nations conference. In this project I was a chair so I ran the conference. We studied two different world issues one was NORTh KOREA and the other one was the ISRAEL PALESTINE ISSUE. We had conference on both of these. The goal was to make a resolution for this project.
- What would you tell another student if they asked why the MUN project was important?
If I were to be able to tell another student why the UN project is so important I would tell him/her that it teaches you how to research current events. Over the course of this project I learned how to research in a hole nother way. During the briefs I wrote I had to know which sites were credible. This skill is so important in the real life. Knowing how to find and dig for the best information that will help your opinion is a skill that some adults don't even have. After this project I now have the confidence to research events a know that the informations I find is from a reliable source. Overall the UN project is so important because you can learn the skills to research current events with the confidence that you found a credible source.
Think of this project overall- which habit of mind were you most proud of using during the conference?
Over the course of the conference I was most proud of my perspective skills to keep the conference going smoothly. I was a chair in this conference so I had to keep an open mind about this issues and to be able to see the other side. There were some times in the conference were I completely disagreed with what the delegates were stating. I had to be able to see the other side of the argument to truly run the conference farley. I could have only let certain countries speak that I agree with but I had to be able to see the other perspective to further enhance the conference experience. All and all I was most proud of my perspective skills in the past UN conference.
What was the greatest challenge you faced in the project and how did you work through it?
For me the greatest challenge I had in this project was being alone and doing something different than the rest of the class. The way the I worked through this was communicating to my teachers and researching questions I had online. An example of me doing this was in the big poster. I had to make a big poster for this project and I found a lot of struggles in making this. I used my resources online to find way to make this piece of art look amazing. This was my biggest challenge in my project and I am happy with myself on how I handled it.
What was the most interesting speech, resolution, amendment, or comment by one of the delegates?
During the course of the conference one speech stood out to me and that one was Rollens speech. In the course of his speech he made many great and intsiful points. One of the greatest ones was how he pointed of that the resolution are nonbinding and how we need to make a resolution that both parties would agree on. This was a great point and the rest of his speech was amazing. He did a great job in the conference and was really composed and relaxed. Rollen did a great job in this conference in a breathtaking way.
The Tragedy Project
In this project we first studied greek tragedies and how they benefited society. We took that knowledge and created our own tragedy about a modern day issue. We had to have the play presented in either a movie, graphic novel, or a live performance.
graphic novel
Script
PROJECT REFLECTION
In this project I am most proud of the way I figured out how to use photoshop to create our graphic novel. I wanted to make our graphic novel in an original by using photoshop. To make our graphic novel I first drew a lot of images and scenes. Then I took all of images and put them on new documents on photoshop. I am proud of my self to create a graphic novel from scratch. To have all the work in the book be yours is a great feeling of accomplishment. The actual novel was constantly being revised and edited. There are many separate things I did in this project but the piece that made me most proud was the graphic novel.
The advice that I would give to next years class would be what I struggled on, time management. I would tell all of the students to make every second count and then you will have more time for refinement. If I was aware of this I would have had that much more time to refine my project. I did not realize how important each day was for producing a wonderful project. I would tell them to plane each day out and stick to schedule. By doing this you can develop your project as effectively as possible. Especially if you are doing a graphic novel it helps to have the time to refine your work of art.
I felt like working with a partner was a great experience. It help with the brainstorming process and you can do twice the work in the same time it would take you doing it by yourself. It was hard for our group to decide who was doing what and when we needed that certain thing. I did feel like I didn’t help that much in the writing process but my partner didn't really help with the drawing process. On the other hand we did play to our strengths very well. It was a lot easier to talk to your partner about something than have to think about it your self. I definitely think doing this will help me work with others down the road.
The hardest part of this project for me was having to make the dialog seem realistic. I am so used to writing pieces that are just my thoughts (just like this) that it was hard for me to make them seem like there was a natural flow to the conversation. The way I got though this was actually talking to myself or to my partner and make the dialog work. Just putting yourself in this role can give you some inspiration on what to say and how to say it. To have the conversation evolve though the dialog. That challenge was hard but with same problem solving and imagination we push through it.
The advice that I would give to next years class would be what I struggled on, time management. I would tell all of the students to make every second count and then you will have more time for refinement. If I was aware of this I would have had that much more time to refine my project. I did not realize how important each day was for producing a wonderful project. I would tell them to plane each day out and stick to schedule. By doing this you can develop your project as effectively as possible. Especially if you are doing a graphic novel it helps to have the time to refine your work of art.
I felt like working with a partner was a great experience. It help with the brainstorming process and you can do twice the work in the same time it would take you doing it by yourself. It was hard for our group to decide who was doing what and when we needed that certain thing. I did feel like I didn’t help that much in the writing process but my partner didn't really help with the drawing process. On the other hand we did play to our strengths very well. It was a lot easier to talk to your partner about something than have to think about it your self. I definitely think doing this will help me work with others down the road.
The hardest part of this project for me was having to make the dialog seem realistic. I am so used to writing pieces that are just my thoughts (just like this) that it was hard for me to make them seem like there was a natural flow to the conversation. The way I got though this was actually talking to myself or to my partner and make the dialog work. Just putting yourself in this role can give you some inspiration on what to say and how to say it. To have the conversation evolve though the dialog. That challenge was hard but with same problem solving and imagination we push through it.
Mask Project
This project is like the stepping stone into animas. You open yourself up to be confident in yourself and abilities. In this project we wrote an essay on three ways we have been socialized and even before that we did a lot of research of socialization. So we now have this easy and we also have our masks representing some key points in our essays. We have put a lot of hard work in to this project so I hope you enjoy my Mask Project.
Mask
Mask Essay
Project Reflection
The part that I was most proud of my mask was the “broken brain” part. After looking back on what I did to my mask I realized that I put the most refinement and effort in the brain. I felt like the metaphor that the brain showed really symbolized my essay and how I have been socialized. During the exhibition I got many remarks on how well the brain looks works with this project. The brain deserves being noticed from all the work and refinement that was put in to it my self. Because of the refinement and effort put into the brain it is my most proud part of my mask.
“My goal is to fix the negative whiplash of socialization. The way I have been socialized to think has helped me see how we can do this. Because I can see things in a new way, I can observe that everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.” This is a direct quote from my essay. I am most proud of this part of my essay because it shows what this project means to me. After learning about socialization all I have wanted to do was to change the negative whiplash of socialization. This quote shows how socialization can stop the negative socialization patterns. This was a very well written part of my essay because It sums up what I took away from this project. This part of my essay makes me proud because it shows how I would help the negative whiplash of socialization.
This whole project interested me but the one thing that I will remember is the economic class video. This video shows the massive curve from the middle class to the very wealthy upper class. This showed me that the class that you were raised in dictate what you become in you live. Over the years I would like to look back on this to see if our economic curve has changed. I like being able to come back to my first project of my freshman year. I wondered how long It would take for of economet statuer to reach a more natural curve. This is definitely the part of this project that I would take away.
After looking back on this project I have realized that I need to work in my evidence part of the habits of heart and mind. The reason I would like to work on my evides is because in my essay I didn't give enough facts to support my thoughts. Project based learning need evidence to support your findings. I need to work on supporting what I think. This project for me was more of a background project which means telling stories that had already happened. Finding evades will make all of my other project more successful and more credible.