Happiness Project
Are You Truly Happy?
What is happiness? What is true happiness? According to a website called “This Emotional Life” they stated that, “Happiness is thought of as the good life, freedom from suffering, flourishing, well-being, prosperity, and pleasure.” Some of the happiest countries in the world are as happy as they are because they value the happiness of others, and making the lives of others simple, as well as valuing being connected to one another. In order to find yourself happiness, you need to have close bonds, not consume yourself with things that cause temporary happiness, and understand first, what makes a person truly happy.
A very critical part in feeling and achieving happiness is to feel a sense of being needed, and importance. For example, there are three “types” of a life someone can live, the pleasant life, the good life, and the meaningful life. The pleasant life, is when you have many easy pleasures come your way, and you experience love, reaction, and connection. The good life, is when you experience pleasure as well as flow, a natural flow to know what to do, and live life freely, and identity, and a signature strength; such as work, love, and play. And lastly, the meaningful life, this means that you feel that you have a purpose in life, and you design for yourself and make a beautiful life, and you feel that you are a needed person. Having a feeling of connection between those we love makes us feel that people care about us, as well as having a feeling of meaning with those around you plays a large role in what makes us happy. In order to have meaning in our life, we must experience pleasure and flow. In addition, we all know the phrase “the pursuit of happiness,” it’s a phrase we’ve for hundreds of years. But what in fact is the pursuit of happiness? Many people might think that it is actually a place, or an object, but this idea of the “pursuit of happiness” in fact decreases people’s happiness forty percent of people say that they believe their life has very little meaning and/or purpose. The reason for this is because we as a society almost trick ourselves into thinking that happiness is a destination or an object that creates happiness in itself. For example, that might be having that big house you’ve always seen, the newest car, or having a lot of money to buy the trending clothes, etc. Instead of occupying our minds with goals like this, it is more worthwhile, and in fact makes us feel better about ourselves when we do things that make us feel we have meaning, such as taking care of a child, or an animal; something that will benefit others. We all need to feel that we have meaning, or that what we do has meaning, and importance in our lives to find happiness.
Another very critical part to achieving happiness for us to constantly strive to surround ourselves with things that make us feel good. For example the difference between the ideas of intrinsic and extrinsic goals. Extrinsic goals, is when you are focused on something outside of you choose to focus on something outside of yourself. Extrinsic goals include: money, beauty, social status, or how many likes you got on your selfie, etc. Something that is outside of yourself. However, an Intrinsic goal, is when you choose to focus on things such as personal aspect, and having close bonds with other. So, basically not worrying about things that are less important, and have very little to no value. Something that comes from within. Those who worry about extrinsic things in life are proven to be less happy, rather than those who dont. Also, not fooling yourself into thinking that material objects, can take the place of true happiness is key to succeeding in having what is actually true happiness. As well as doing only what you need to live, and enjoying life’s simple pleasures. You must find happiness for yourself, and only by means of what will actually make you happy. Not by what is not important.
Cooperation is key to us as a society to find happiness for everyone. We all need to realize that there is an issue to begin with, with the struggle for finding true happiness, so this way we can fix the problem together. We must as one, let go of things that create the feeling of “fake happiness” we all need to experience more flow in our life, and what comes naturally with that. A large majority of people believe that “greed is good;” because we feel that the more and more and more we constantly get and continue to buy, the happier it will make us. We are all running our world as if we are apart of a machine. But, if we want to survive, we are going to have to find a new way to live our lives. We as a human race strive for the feeling of freedom, and we fill this by getting, and getting more; more empty objects to fill what we are missing. But they never last for long. Additionally, we must focus on what the future holds, and make our future the best it can be, not dwelling our past, whether good or bad, not dwelling on what isn’t necessarily important. Next, everybody now a days has some form of social media, however it might not be as innocent as it may seem. It is something that completely consumes our nation, and distracts us from reality. Sure, it may be something that is a fun hobby, but it can create illusions too. It makes us feel we are more connected than we believe, with the illusion of having friends and bonds with people who you more often than not, don’t even know. As a more healthy alternative, we could instead have a higher abundance of friends that we have real bonds with, instead of people we’ve never actually met. We as people who enjoy being very social, want to make others see us as we want them to see us, with this we create the illusion for ourselves that we will never be alone. We as a society, need to learn to not be so dependent on what may not really be there in the first place, we must learn to value important things, that matter, and not so much materialism.
It is essential that we have the right types of motivations and only want to be happy for ourselves, and not for others. You have to be the one to choose how you want to live, and make the choice to do what makes you happy, to do what you love. To only try and focus on simple pleasures that we can find naturally, on a daily basis, not material things, don’t constantly worry about things that have very little importance. Happiness isn’t the beautiful fantasy land we all make ourselves think, nor is it an object we can hold in our hands, it’s something that must come from within you, something that you must create for yourself.
What Did We Do?
For this project we studied one simple question, what is happiness? We watched numerous videos, read many articles, and and multiple conversations on what happiness means, along with reading the book “Brave New World” and what makes people happy. As well as what true happiness is in a person’s life. Once we all got our own preference of what happiness is, we then began to write our essays and make our art pieces. We based our art pieces on what our essay was about. In addition to that, we held a socratic seminar with both students as well as parents at our school, to get their input on the meaning of happiness.
Artist Statement
My art piece is mainly representing the choice to be happy, and how it is only up to you to make yourself happy, and you must want to be happy. As well as trying to tell people that they need to break away from things that do not make you happy, and only cause temporary happiness, and to try to focus on important things. I conveyed this by using the quote I did on my art piece, that “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” Along with the quote, I also used the idea of the “take one” section of my piece where I put words that are helpful to people in achieving happiness on a day to day basis, as a way to help them.
My art piece is mainly representing the choice to be happy, and how it is only up to you to make yourself happy, and you must want to be happy. As well as trying to tell people that they need to break away from things that do not make you happy, and only cause temporary happiness, and to try to focus on important things. I conveyed this by using the quote I did on my art piece, that “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” Along with the quote, I also used the idea of the “take one” section of my piece where I put words that are helpful to people in achieving happiness on a day to day basis, as a way to help them.
Model United Nations Project
Project Overview:
For this project, each student was assigned a country, a country in which we were all supposed to research our country's perspective and side on the two issues, those being the North Korea nuclear weapon program, and the Israel Palestine issue. For both projects, we collaborated with our countries allies, an began figuring our country's side to the issue. Then we began writing overviews of the issue as well as writing speeches, and most importantly resolutions. The resolutions were well though out sides and perspectives of our county's beliefs on the issue, and four country's resolutions would get chosen for a final vote. Then at the end of the unit, we held an exhibition, modeling a real model UN conference, where we give speeches and present. Then we all come together on a final resolution. My country, Libya
For this project, each student was assigned a country, a country in which we were all supposed to research our country's perspective and side on the two issues, those being the North Korea nuclear weapon program, and the Israel Palestine issue. For both projects, we collaborated with our countries allies, an began figuring our country's side to the issue. Then we began writing overviews of the issue as well as writing speeches, and most importantly resolutions. The resolutions were well though out sides and perspectives of our county's beliefs on the issue, and four country's resolutions would get chosen for a final vote. Then at the end of the unit, we held an exhibition, modeling a real model UN conference, where we give speeches and present. Then we all come together on a final resolution. My country, Libya
Project Reflection
For the overall project I personally feel that the Habit of Heart and Mind i was most proud of was research skills. I felt this was something for me to be proud of because it caused me to go deeper into the issues we were discussing and to make myself think, which was very important for my understanding of this project. To add, I went very into depth on the awareness for my research packet to get a better idea for my country's perspective on the issues we were learning about.
As all projects come with challenges, this project for me, had a challenge all it’s own. During this project I feel that my greatest challenge to face was my public speaking skills. I have personally never been good at public speaking, but throughout the course of this project I feel that my skill has improved a high amount. This is because during class we had plenty of time to practice saying our speeches, and other papers out loud to others, then at the end, we would give feedback and receive tips from others, telling us how we could make it better. This feedback included tips such as; eye contact with the audience, being clear while speaking, and talking and a reasonable pace so that you don’t rush, raising your chances to mess up your speech. This was how I worked through this problem in order to better myself and give myself a higher chance in succeeding.
The speech that I found the most interesting and persuading, and overall very, very well done, was Amina’s speech. Amina’s speech was clearly thought out, and contained a lot of information of why we should have voted for the resolution that she choose for the solution of the Israel Palestine issue. She included persuading facts to sway the delegates decisions as well as the audiences; and went into very deep meaning for some of her statements. Not to mention she was very emotional and bold while giving her speech, which I feel is important to any speech; this is because it made her look more professional and confident. Overall, out of all the speeches and comments made throughout the conference, I feel that Amina’s speech was the most interesting and favorable.
- What would you tell another student if they asked why the MUN project was important?
- Think of this project overall- which habit of mind were you most proud of using during the conference?
- What was the greatest challenge you faced in the project and how did you work through it?
- What was the most interesting speech, resolution, amendment, or comment by one of the delegates?
For the overall project I personally feel that the Habit of Heart and Mind i was most proud of was research skills. I felt this was something for me to be proud of because it caused me to go deeper into the issues we were discussing and to make myself think, which was very important for my understanding of this project. To add, I went very into depth on the awareness for my research packet to get a better idea for my country's perspective on the issues we were learning about.
As all projects come with challenges, this project for me, had a challenge all it’s own. During this project I feel that my greatest challenge to face was my public speaking skills. I have personally never been good at public speaking, but throughout the course of this project I feel that my skill has improved a high amount. This is because during class we had plenty of time to practice saying our speeches, and other papers out loud to others, then at the end, we would give feedback and receive tips from others, telling us how we could make it better. This feedback included tips such as; eye contact with the audience, being clear while speaking, and talking and a reasonable pace so that you don’t rush, raising your chances to mess up your speech. This was how I worked through this problem in order to better myself and give myself a higher chance in succeeding.
The speech that I found the most interesting and persuading, and overall very, very well done, was Amina’s speech. Amina’s speech was clearly thought out, and contained a lot of information of why we should have voted for the resolution that she choose for the solution of the Israel Palestine issue. She included persuading facts to sway the delegates decisions as well as the audiences; and went into very deep meaning for some of her statements. Not to mention she was very emotional and bold while giving her speech, which I feel is important to any speech; this is because it made her look more professional and confident. Overall, out of all the speeches and comments made throughout the conference, I feel that Amina’s speech was the most interesting and favorable.
Tragedy Project
During the tragedy project, we learned and did research on multiple Greek tragedies, and learned about the components of a tragedy. Also, we had the chance to reactant a scene of our choosing from the famous tragedy "Oedipus Rex." As well as learning about the characteristics that make up a tragic hero. This got us ready for the process of making our own tragedies. Which, we the students got to decide what they were about, and what kind of tragedy we wanted to display based on a social issue of our choosing.
Tragedy Project Reflection
To begin, the part of my project that I am most proud of is the overall making of the pictures. This is because weather we used real people and fake backgrounds or real people and fake backgrounds, the process took quite a while. It was a lot of work and took time and multiples tries to get the right poses and hold them long enough to get a good picture, especially if it was a action shot, or the emotion was something other than normal such as angry or sad or afraid. Also, when we used images in photoshop, that took even longer because you wanted to make them look realistic and not messy. So, I am proud of this because of the process that took longer to make the pictures.
Next, some advice for next years students doing this project, in order to be successful with this would to be to use your time very wisely and make sure you get stuff done whenever possible, because trust me, it may seem like you have a lot of time; but it’ll go faster than you think. Even if your partner isn’t there some day, find something to do anyway, don’t wait; this will help in the long run.
To include, what I would’ve refined about my project would be used more time at the beginning, because in the first three days for the final, my partner wasn’t there so, I wish we had more time in the beginning to plan for things like that and what to do. Moving on, working with my partner for the most part was sort of awkward at first with communication and ideas for the play, because neither of us really knew what to say. But overall working went pretty well because for most of the time we exchanged ideas and worked well together on making the actual project.
Lastly, the thing that proved to be the most challenging for me personally during this project was trying to arrange all the final picture into their final places on google docs because was had so many so it took a while to get them in the right order, and sometimes they would never even show up so it created more stress for me to find them again and at the speech bubbles if needed again, so that was definitely the most struggling part for me during this project.
To begin, the part of my project that I am most proud of is the overall making of the pictures. This is because weather we used real people and fake backgrounds or real people and fake backgrounds, the process took quite a while. It was a lot of work and took time and multiples tries to get the right poses and hold them long enough to get a good picture, especially if it was a action shot, or the emotion was something other than normal such as angry or sad or afraid. Also, when we used images in photoshop, that took even longer because you wanted to make them look realistic and not messy. So, I am proud of this because of the process that took longer to make the pictures.
Next, some advice for next years students doing this project, in order to be successful with this would to be to use your time very wisely and make sure you get stuff done whenever possible, because trust me, it may seem like you have a lot of time; but it’ll go faster than you think. Even if your partner isn’t there some day, find something to do anyway, don’t wait; this will help in the long run.
To include, what I would’ve refined about my project would be used more time at the beginning, because in the first three days for the final, my partner wasn’t there so, I wish we had more time in the beginning to plan for things like that and what to do. Moving on, working with my partner for the most part was sort of awkward at first with communication and ideas for the play, because neither of us really knew what to say. But overall working went pretty well because for most of the time we exchanged ideas and worked well together on making the actual project.
Lastly, the thing that proved to be the most challenging for me personally during this project was trying to arrange all the final picture into their final places on google docs because was had so many so it took a while to get them in the right order, and sometimes they would never even show up so it created more stress for me to find them again and at the speech bubbles if needed again, so that was definitely the most struggling part for me during this project.
Socialization Project-
For this project, we learned about many aspects of socialization, as well as how it has affected us personally. We learned about the agents of socialization, and learned about what affects us and what socializes us through this. Also, we learned about socialization in everyday life and how it affects us in ways without us even knowing it. For example, we watched the movie "Mean Girls" as well as a video called "A Girl Like Me." This project helped us learn more about ourselves and what effects who we are. Overall, this project was to me, different and a way to
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