Stephanie Gray

Dr. Rand
UWRT 110
04 April 2015
Happiness in College; The Lazy Truth
Many different things can determine happiness and for each person it is different. A lot of
people go to college to have fun, meet new friends that will last a lifetime, and get an education,
as well as other things like joining clubs, getting involved and setting up your future life in a
certain career. What ever it is that you come to college for, I would say that almost everyone
wants to be happy. You can go up to a group of college students on any campus and ask them
how they are doing. The majority of these students will say, Im alright or Im good. But
there are always a few students who say that there is something going on, or that theyre stressed
about something. As college students, sometimes we can find ourselves unhappy, it can be for a
moment because you overslept by ten minutes and dont have time to eat breakfast, it could be
that you didnt do well on an exam, or more serious where you did not get accepted from your
pre-requisite program to your major and you are stuck. Whatever the reason may be, coming out
of that unhappiness can be difficult, but finding happiness is worthwhile.
Realizing what I wanted and what made me happy was the key step for me when I found
myself unhappy here at UNCC my first semester. Coming here to school, twelve hours away
from home, was not as easy as I thought. I never would have predicted that I would miss home
so much and that I would be unhappy here at school. I thought that I would come here, meet new
friends, go out every once in a while, enjoy the nice weather, and gain an education about
nursing. But these things that I wanted didnt were more difficult to achieve then I anticipated.

I didnt realize I was unhappy until about two months into school. I found myself not
going out and meeting new people, but just hanging out with one of my roommates. I live in a
four person/four bedroom suite, and every room is like that in my building. I discovered that
there is not much social activity going around when everyone can just hang out in their own
common room instead of going out and meeting people. I kind of just accepted that and didnt
try, but boy was I wrong.
I was lazy, I expected to come to college and meet new people and friends, but that those
people would come and find me. I dont know why I thought this, I just figured everyone else
wanted what I wanted so that they should do that work and all I had to do was wait around and
say hi. Looking back I realize that no one was going to come and knock on my door and be like
hey lets be best friends. Of coarse that would never happen. Now I see that if I wanted to meet
new people, I couldnt just wait around for them to come, I had to go out and meet them in the
middle. I had to put on some nice clothes and show some effort and go socialize. People dont
get happiness by waiting for it (Chittister), if I wanted something I would have to go out into the
world and get it. I now know how much since that makes and how true that is to ever situation
we put ourselves in.
My dad has always told me that if I want to be happy, I have to make myself happy. Yes,
you can depend on other people to make you laugh and have a good time every once in a while,
but you have to depend on yourself first. You have to wake up with a good attitude and chose to
be happy, not wake up and want something to happen to make you happy because odds are thats
not going to happen. Luck has a lot to do with happiness, but it also can have no effect at all.
Sometimes people get lucky and win the lottery, find ten dollars on the ground, get the perfect
schedule for next semester, get a great deal on a new coat, etc. While other people are not as

lucky, they lose ten dollars, they get a bad schedule, they fall and hurt themselves, etc. But you
can control your reaction and how you handle a situation after those things happen.
Dan Gilbert, a Harvard University Psychologist, shows that we have the ability to think
about our actions before we follow through with them. In his video, The surprising science of
happiness, he explains that happiness is synthesized and that happiness can be, in a sense, predetermined. Right inside your head, in the frontal lobe of your brain, you have an experience
stimulator. This stimulator allows for you to think of scenarios in you head before you decide to
do them (Gilbert). The way I think about it is when you lie awake before you fall asleep and you
sort of daydream scenarios of your next day and the way you want it to unfold and carry out. Its
the process of thinking before you say or do something. Now we can think about what makes us
happy, we can use our experience stimulator and experience what we know makes us happy in
our mind and the go out and actually achieve it.
Gilbert goes on and starts to compare the life of a paraplegic person to someone who just
won the lottery. Initially each man has complete opposite reactions, feelings, and emotions. The
man who wins the lottery is filled with joy and can spend money on whatever he wants and enjoy
the lavish lifestyle, while the paraplegic man is suffering and has to change his entire lifestyle
and the way he lives and survives. What is interesting is that one year later, each man has the
same level of happiness. A paraplegic can achieve the same amount of happiness as he did before
they became paraplegic (Gilbert). If this is true, it shows that outside factors, in the long run, do
not have much of an affect as people think they do.
Of coarse, outside factors still have an affect on our lives. After a year, the two men find
themselves on the same page, being just as happy as they were before. But during that year, each
man experienced many different things. A year is a very long time, even a day is a long time, and

for those periods of time, the lottery winner most likely had more fun, and was happier and got to
experience more life and have more enjoyable time. While the paraplegic had a rough time, he or
she had to figure out a new way of life and figure out how to gain the happiness and the joy back.
During the year, each day was different and it was hard for the paraplegic to keep going, he had
to fight, while the lottery winner enjoyed himself and his money and whatever it is that his
money brought him. In the long run, you dont see to many of the ups and downs in life and you
can find content and happiness, but on a day-by-day, moment-by-moment status, it can be very
difficult to do so.
As college students, we dont like to think about such extremes. We dont compare our
lives to that of a paraplegic, but to the person next to us. I know for me, I saw all of my friends
from home enjoying college. They were all going out and having fun and meeting new people,
and I was sitting watching TV or Netflix. We always compare our lives to others and always
want what others have. But do you think the paraplegic man would have found happiness if he
didnt try? No of coarse not. He didnt wallow in his self-pity of not being able to walk again and
compare his life to winning the lottery. He may have done this for a little while and thought why
me? But then he got over it and decided that if he wanted to change he would have to make that
change. He would have to quit comparing his life to others and just face the facts and face life.
We try and blame our problems on other people or things. We dont like to accept the
truth that we messed up or that we are making ourselves unhappy. I think this is because it is so
much easier for us to put the fault of our problems on other things or people. We see it as the
world is coming to an end if we dont get the grade we want. We decide to blame the professor or
the school when we can only blame ourselves. This can be fixed by emailing the professor and

seeing what options you have. A year from now this class wont matter, but at the time it does.
Just like with the paraplegic, in the long run these things wont matter.
Facing reality is never an easy task, we just want things in life to come easy to us, but
they never do. College students dont often realize when they are happy; they are just living in
the moment and enjoying whats going on. But, it is very easy and clear for us to realize (and
show) when we are unhappy. We tend to complain more about our problem then actually
spending time and effort fixing our problem. But the paraplegic man overcame complaining and
made a decision to change. But most college kids dont want to do that. We dont know that life
gets harder along the way, but with a harder life, comes better times as well, like the more effort
you put in, the better result you have, the higher the risk, the better the reward. Its hard to see
that right now it is pretty simple, go to class, work hard, get good grades, have some fun. We
dont realize the life that is ahead of us, and the factors we will face. Comparing ourselves to our
friends and what others have is the wrong comparison; we should be comparing minor situations
and problems to our future and what we may face then down the road.
The negative side of life helps in the search for happiness (Harter). Having a bad day
makes you realizes how great and precious the good days are. No one can be happy twenty-four
hours a day seven days a week. Things happen in life that we have no control over. Failing an
exam, loosing one hundred dollars, getting lost, losing a friend or family member, a tree falls on
your car. Everyone goes through things in life that just happen, we get stressed out, but these
times allow for people to grow and learn new things about themselves and what they want. Every
experience someone goes through has a message or a lesson that can be learned. Happiness is a
process made up of all the bits of a thing- both sour and sweet (Chittster 5). So we have to take
the good the bad and the ugly in order to be happy. In a year or two you are not going to

remember failing that exam, you are going to remember the exam that you passed because you
studied so much and worked hard for.
Its the little things in life that we have to realize and put into perspective. Dwelling on
every little thing that goes wrong will never allow you to be happy, you have to pick and choice
your battles. My roommate does this a lot, she decides that every little thing gets her down. She
always complains about things like how she doesnt want to do this or that for her sorority, or
how she is having money problems, and that her schedule is bad. And I get those things, I am not
saying you cant complain about things, because we all do it, but decide what you want to
complain about and decide what you want to face and over come. Not having time to paint your
nails is not worth ruining your day over.
Being happy can also lead to others being happy as well, just like being sad or in a bad
mood can lead others to be in ones too. Dr. Anjuli Srivastava for ABC News says that happiness
is contagious: Having a happy friend or family member who lives within a mile of you appears
to increase the probability, up to 15 percent in one study, that you will be happy, too. So just
being around others when you are down or sad can help. Its like spreading joy at Christmas
time, when you glad and content, others around will pick that up.
So we can dwell on the little speed bumps in life that are thrown our way, but when they
do come around, there are things we can do to make ourselves happy. Being in college we can
find things that interest us like clubs, sports and activities and get involved. We can set aside time
for ourselves, find our me time. We can exercise or go for a walk, we can take a break from
work for a bit, we can sleep, and treat ourselves every once in a while (Friend). It may take a
little bit of time and effort to get the things you truly want and it may not be easy, but it will be

worth it. Realize what it takes to make you individually happy and to find yourself. We should
live in the moment but think about the future and what it holds for us.

Works Cited
Chittister, Joan. Happiness. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eardmans Publishing Co., 2011. Print
15 Mar. 2015
Dr. Srivastava, Anjuli. How Happiness Affects Your Health. ABC News. 27 May 2013. 14 Mar.
2015.
Friend, Nina. 18 Things You Need To Do To Be Happy In College News Magazine, The
Huffington Post. 25 June 2014. 30 Mar. 2015
Gilbert, Dan. The surprising science of happiness. Ted.com. Feb 2004. Web. 14 Mar. 2015
Harter, Pascale. Can we make ourselves happier? News Magazine, BBC. 1 July 2013. 14 Mar.
2015.

Reflection
I learned a lot from writing and researching this inquiry process. I have learned the large
difference between research and inquiry and how you can use you opinion and voice in inquiry
with research to help support it, while research is facts and information to prove a point or idea. I
like being able to use my voice and state my opinion and thoughts. Throughout the paper, I used
I and we and you and I liked being able to use first person.
My paper started off as strictly research, I thought we had to use the five sources we
originally picked out. I wasnt putting my voice in it and I was just using facts. This was a large
struggle because I couldnt make any of my sources connect to well. I was doing the effects of
happiness on ones life, so I was basing it off of health, and science/technology, and friends and
family, and how long you live and it turned out to be a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. After realizing I
was making no sense, I found my audience and my voice and started to completely rewrite my
paper. I took bits and pieces from my original writing and incorporated it into my new paper.
Changing my inquiry idea wasnt easy but I am so happy I did. After I discovered what I
wanted to say about happiness and the long/short terms affects on us as college students, it began
to flow a lot more. My paper made sense and the happiness vs. unhappiness really started to
appear.
It is important to look at the historical view of happiness because in life isnt that what we
strive for? Thats the way I see life, finding the people we love and spending time with them and
creating a happy life. Throughout history this all we have been doing, changing new ways when
we arent happy and trying to keep things that make us happy the same. We dont buy a dress just
to by a dress, we buy a dress because we feel happy and good about ourselves while wearing the

dress. We do what we do and make the decisions we make throughout history because it makes
us happy.
I think my analytical/evaluation skills have changed as a result of the inquiry project. I now
know that I have to put everything in perspective and think about the long and short-term effects
of my decisions and what I want to do. I am proud of the progress and change I made form my
original draft. I didnt know what to write or how to write an inquiry project, but after my
conference I had a complete change and asked myself the questions I thought my audience
would want to know. I think I now know a lot about being and staying happy and how to get
there and happiness as a whole. I am proud of my paper because I know I put a lot of effort, time,
and thought into writing it and I think my audience will benefit from reading it.