This project was about how we can find happiness in a hurting world. We read the book, Brave New World, which was a dystopia and how they relied on their pills to make them happy. This ties to todays world because so many people rely on material things like alcohol, drugs, or clothes to make them happy. We then started researching what makes people happy and did happiness experiments on ourselves over a week. We learned so much about happiness so that we could have an understanding for ourselves and others surrounding us. The project closed by making our happiness videos. We gathered all of the information we have learned over the semester and made a happiness video on what the true definition of happiness is. Happiness is not one general term to describe a feeling, but it is relative to everyone and how they perceive it through their daily lives.
Annotated Bibliography
Happiness Experiment
Reflection
Socialization and Mask Project
My Mask
My Essay
My Reflection
For the Socialization and Identity project I grew as a writer by being able to put my thoughts and emotions into my essay. I was able to write a decent essay on how i truly felt and i could express myself the way I wanted to. I was able to dig deeper with certain subjects and the words were able to flow out of me. I took many tries for it to be an A, and I had up and down moments thinking to myself that it was good enough, but I wanted it to be better, more applicable to others. An example of my growth is that I was able to have discussions with groups about the identity categories, and was able to write about things we talked about in depth.
Through this whole project, I was able to take away many things, but the one thing I really took away was how true the identity categories are. When we learned about them, I could relate and knew people that felt the same way. In my essay it states, “I need to be perfect like the women in the magazines, and wanting to be like the teenagers around me: bad and rude.” I never thought about how I felt and how I was influenced, but I was influenced so much in my childhood and thought that those things were the “norm”. Learning about these things made me realize how mean the world is...Why are people judged because of their skin color? Why are girls taught to be sluts when they are older? Why are teens so troubled? Why does your income greatly affect your future? Why are things the way they are? This world has caused stereotypes for every identity category that are completely unnecessary and bad. But, what will stick with me, is how much people are affected and trying to figure out a way to end it.
I have grown through this project by managing my time and digging deeper. For example, when I know exhibition is the next day, I don’t care about what I want to do or how I feel, but I focus on what I need to do and how things need to be. It can be similar to selflessness in many ways: Caring about how people feel, taking over your groups tasks when they are not your own, and going the extra mile when you do not want to. This project made me think more of the world around me and of others. I learned how to dig deeper in conversations and essays. But, in the beginning of my project, I found it hard to work with my group and to come up with good ideas. I wasn't a good project worker. I had high expectations and thought I could put it off. I soon realized that I can't do that and I wanted my voice heard. I had 50+ ideas going through my head and learned to narrow them down so I could share them with my group. I put my focus on the end product instead of focusing what was right in front of me, which can sometimes be bad, but it this circumstance it was good. It helped me see the possible outcomes and helped us think further.
In my opinion, I can be a difficult person to work with and and be controlling, but at the same time, I can put things off. When things are hard I tend to want to give up. I have learned that doesn’t do any good. But, for this project, I felt I found the right balance. I did my jobs and thought outside the box, yet let other people do theirs. I offered to help, but didn’t take over. There were times when I felt like a mom role, but we still had a ton of fun. I thought that the project could have been more creative in my group and that we could have had better ideas, but overall I thought it went good and I am happy with it.
For this project, we learned about socialization and all of the identity categories. Socialization is the process of living in one’s culture and how to live within it. All the identity categories include: gender, race, income, age, sexual orientation, religion, and more. For the project, we spent adequate time on each category and learned a lot about each one, so that we could know our information in order to display it. We made masks out of plaster and started to design them based on how we feel as people inside our "categories". We also spent a while working on essays that describe how we have been socialized in our lives. I really enjoyed this project because we got to write, tell, and draw how we feel and have been socialized.