Deby Jizi

Harrison West
UWRT-1102 (29)
8 February 2016
What Happiness Means To Me

My view of happiness, what it is and what it means to me, has

changed a lot over the course of my relatively short lifetime. Id first
like to say I believe theres a major difference between what makes me
happy and what happiness means to me. Many different things can
make me feel the short-lived emotion of happiness. For instance a
stranger smiling at me, getting the last parking spot, or someone
simply holding the door open for me brings me joy. These little things
along with many others that happen throughout a day make me happy,
but when I think of my happiness, to me it more closely represents how
happy I am in my life currently.
When I got to college I took it as a clean slate and really tried to
find myself. Given all that independence youre finally able to focus on
yourself without any outside influences. I decided I wanted and be as
happy as I could be in this new place and tried doing things differently
to achieve that feeling. One of the things I did was stop using other
peoples happiness as a gauge for how happy I should be in my own
life. Everyone has role models and in my case mine is my dad. I use to

tell myself I would never be happy in life if I wasnt as successful as

him. And when I say success I really mean that I thought I needed to
make as much money him. I figured without the stress of money
troubles and the ability to provide for my family everything else would
be good in my life and Id be happy. Later I realized money and
material possessions dont really make me truly happy. Money can
have a effect on my happiness but is not the source of it. I instead
really started to try and look deeper into myself and determine what
brings me true eternal joy and not short-lived emotional reactions.
I found that one of the most important aspects of my happiness
is simply being myself surrounded by friends. That seems pretty clich
to say but let me explain. I think in our society we are all trained one
way or another to always be worried about impressing or acting like
the best version of ourselves around others. I use to be preoccupied
with trying to impress what equates to complete strangers. It changed
how I dressed, how I spoke, what I did, all because I wanted peoples
impression of me to be the best possible. That may not seem like a
bad thing to some people but to me I ended up feeling as if I was
always on my guard. When Im with true friends can be myself, let my
guard down, have no fear of judgment and truly relax. Id also like to
mention its important to realize whos a real friend and whos more or
a less a strongly acquainted person. I dont think this aspect of life can
be overlooked enough.

The second aspect I found that added to my happiness was

setting goals and accomplishing them. These goals were to be
influenced by no one else but me and must somehow improve my life.
A goal could be to finish the semester with a 3.0 GPA or higher. Only I
can truly influence my performance by putting in the work myself and
making good grades certainly improves my life. Another example
however could be the goal of getting in shape for summer. This goal is
obviously influenced by me but could it be it influence by anyone else?
Am I setting the goal to impress a woman? I had to think about am I
really doing this for myself. Now it is improving my life by making me
physically healthier, but what about my mental health. What if the girl
doesnt notice, what if I get crushed spiral into a deep depression?
Thats a little dramatic but you get my point. By thinking this way I
really tried to make sure the goals I was setting were really about my
own wants and no one elses. When I completed these goals I felt
elated and achieved that eternal happiness I would have never felt by
completing a goal partially influence by someone else.
Now those are not my only aspects of my life that keep me
happy, there are also many other smaller things that add to my
happiness. Nor are they the ones I plan to rely on to keep me happy for
the rest of my life. In the future my happiness may change to rely on
others like a family. They do however let me say I feel like a happy
person today.

1) First Step: Identify Your Concerns

Write down 3-5 concerns you have about your paper. (Complete and bring to peer
review session.)
1) Too many examples without going into detail
2) Doesnt encompass all that makes me happy
3) Vague examples, or common
4) Not revealing enough

2) Peer Review Questions: (Use during peer review session when responding to your
classmates papers, include answers in a summary endnote.)
a. Where can the text benefit from further detail or explanation? Where does it need less?
b. What does this writer do particularly well that you would like to add to your own writing
repertoire?
c. Where in the text do you, as the reader, get confused? Point these out to the writer.
d. Pick out a line in the text that you think is working particularly well and share this line
with the author so that s/he may continue to write at this level.
e. How well does the text match the three essentials of the personal essay that were the
focus of this assignment:
the personal presence of the author
an engagement between self and the world
the author's self-exploration/ self-discovery

I think you had a good amount of examples and I think each has
a good amount of detail to accompany it; if you went into a lot of
detail, you might lose your reader because of how many examples you
have. I liked the way you gave the reader glimpses of what makes you

happy. I also think it is okay to not encompass everything that makes

you happy in this essay, as long as you wrote the major things! Your
examples had a very personal tone, which made it seem less common.
I also think you revealed a good amount.
Your writing can benefit from more detail in your concluding
paragraph when you said Now those are not my only aspects of my
life that keep me happy, there are also many other smaller things that
add to my happiness. I think you could maybe just briefly list a few of
the smaller things that make you happy. In the fourth paragraph when
you are talking about your goals, I think it would benefit you if you
wrote about a goal you set and accomplished and how you felt. You
gave examples that sounded more like potential goals than completed
goals. I think your style of giving examples and explaining them is
done particularly well. There wasnt really an example you gave where
I was left wondering what you meant by that. I felt a little confused in
the second paragraph when you wrote Given all that independence
youre finally able to focus on yourself without any outside influences. I
decided I wanted and be as happy as I could be in this new place and
tried doing things differently to achieve that feeling. Maybe you could
rearrange the wording or something. I thought it was a good idea but
could maybe use a different phrasing. Your second sentence, Id first
like to say I believe theres a major difference between what makes me
happy and what happiness means to me is really strong and makes

for a good beginning statement to your paper. I also think when you
wrote, It changed how I dressed, how I spoke, what I did, all because I
wanted peoples impression of me to be the best possible. That may
not seem like a bad thing to some people but to me I ended up feeling
as if I was always on my guard, it is a very relatable sentence to many
people and I really liked it! You incorporated the three essentials to the
personal essay very well. Your personal presence was felt through your
examples and in your third paragraph, there was a clear engagement
between self and world. And your self exploration and self discovery
was consistent throughout your paper. Great work! Faith McGee
I was very pleased with the feedback that was provided to me.
My concerns about my essay were cleared up rather than heightened.
She provided overall positive feedback but was unclear on a few
things. I followed her suggestion of rearranging my wording in the
beginning of the second paragraph. I didnt follow her suggestion of
adding more detail in the conclusion, I felt there were already many
examples of my happiness throughout the essay and more would be
white noise.
I hope that the feedback I provided to my partner was helpful. I
gave some input that suggested he should maybe provided some more
detail about his friends as a reason for his happiness. He had many
examples of what they did together that made him happy but not any
reasons to why they are his friends, the characteristics that make them

special. I said that there could be a moment to describe a selfdiscovery in his third paragraph after he talked about going through a
mini-boot camp. I suggested he talk about how the experience
changed him if that was true. I also said that I thought his personal
presence was extremely good evident in the first paragraph, when he
talked about the passing of his grandfather.