Reflections Assignment (15%)
Learning Objectives:
•Compose a variety of structured paragraphs and reflections.
•Apply conventions of grammar and punctuation to the creation and editing of documents.
•Apply the APA style of documentation to a variety of texts.
Due Date: Week 8 – to be submitted in SLATE-Assessments > Assignments.
Instructions
:
Typed, double spaced, 11-12 size font (Times New Roman, Calibri or Arial)
Include a cover page in APA style
Include In-text citations and a Reference page in APA style (your Reference page will likely only include one Reference entry – the article “A Formula for Happiness”
Follow rules of formal academic writing.
There are
three (3) parts
to this assignment. Please carefully read each part and make sure that you submit all three parts.
Part 1:
Read the article “A Formula for Happiness” from the New York Times.
I have attached the article to the end of this assignment sheet
. Write a reflection paragraph of approximately 8-12 sentences answering the following questions. Be sure to cite in APA format.
a. What is the purpose of this article?
b. What did you learn from the article?
c. Do you agree or disagree with what the author discusses in the article?
Quote one or two examples from the article and use the correct APA citation after the quote
.
Part 2:
Re-read your paragraph(s) written in Assessment 1
or
2, revise and edit the paragraph for problems with paragraph structure, clarity, spelling, and grammar. Make sure your composition follows all the conventions of academic paragraph writing. Rewrite the paragraph(s) in a polished, mechanically-sound, edited format.
Note
: You
do not
have to include the original paragraph from the Assessment.
Part 3:
Reflect on your learning in the first half of the course. Consider questions such as: What are your strengths in English reading and writing? What areas do you need to work on? Write your reflection in a paragraph of 8-12 sentences.
Assessment will be graded on clarity, specific details, editing, reflection, and use of APA. This assignment is out of 60 marks and worth 15% of your total grade.
A Formula for Happiness
ByArthur C. Brooks
December 14, 2013
Happiness has traditionally been considered an elusive and evanescent thing. To some, even trying to achieve it is an exercise in futility. It has been said that “happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
Social scientists have caught the butterfly. After 40 years of research, they attribute happiness to three major sources: genes, events, and values. Armed with this knowledge an
da few simple rules
, we can improve our lives and the lives of those around us. We can even construct a system that fulfills our founders’ promises and empowers all Americans to pursue happiness. Psychologists and economists have studied happiness for decades. They begin simply enough — by asking people how happy they are.
The richest data available to social scientists is the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey, a survey of Americans conducted since 1972. This widely used resource is considered the scholarly gold standard for understanding social phenomena. The numbers on happiness from the survey are surprisingly consistent. Every other year for four decades, roughly a third of Americans have said they’re “very happy,” and about half report being “pretty happy.” Only about 10 to 15 percent typically say they’re “not too happy.” Psychologists have used sophisticated techniques to verify these responses, and such survey results have proved accurate.
Beneath these averages are some demographic differences. For many years, researchers found that women were happier than men, although recent studies contend that the gap has narrowed or may even have been reversed. Political junkies might be interested to learn that conservative women are particularly blissful: about 40 percent say they are very happy. That makes them slightly happier than conservative men and significantly happier than liberal women. The unhappiest of all are liberal men - only about a fifth consider themselves very happy. But even demographically identical people vary in their happiness. What explains this?
The first answer involves our
genes.Researchers at the University of Minnesotahave tracked identical twins who were separated as infants and raised by separate families. As
genetic carbon copies brought up in different environments, these twins are a social scientist’s dream, helping us disentangle nature from nurture. These researchers found that we inherit a surprising proportion of our happiness at any given moment — around 48 percent. (Since I discovered this, I’ve been blaming my parents for my bad moods.)
If about half of our happiness is hard-wired in our genes, what about the other half? It’s tempting to assume that one-time events — like getting a dream job or an Ivy League acceptance letter — will permanently bring the happiness we seek. And studies suggest that isolated events do control a big fraction of our happiness — up to 40 percent at any given time.
But while one-off events do govern a fair amount of our happiness, each event’s impact proves remarkably short-lived. People assume that major changes like moving to California or getting a big raise will make them permanently better off. They won’t. Huge goals may take years of hard work to meet, and the striving itself may be worthwhile, but the happiness they create decreases after just a few months.
So don’t bet your well-being on big one-off events. The ‘big brass ring’ is not the secret to lasting happiness. To review: About half of happiness is genetically determined. Up to an additional 40 percent comes from the things that have occurred in our recent past — but that won’t last very long. That leaves just about 12 percent. That might not sound like much, but the good news is that we can bring that 12 percent under our control. It turns out that choosing to pursue four basic values of faith, family, community, and work is the surest path to happiness, given that a certain percentage is genetic and not under our control in any way.
The first three are fairly uncontroversial. Empirical evidence that faith, family and friendships increase happiness and meaning is hardly shocking. Few dying patients regret overinvesting in rich family lives, community ties and spiritual journeys. Work, though, seems less intuitive. Popular culture insists our jobs are drudgery, and one survey recently made headlines by reporting that fewer than a third of American workers felt engaged; that is praised, encouraged, cared for and several other gauges seemingly aimed at measuring how transcendently fulfilled one is at work.
Those criteria are too high for most marriages, let alone jobs. What if we ask something simpler: “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your job?” This simpler approach is more revealing because respondents apply their own standards. This is what the General Social Survey asks, and the results may surprise. More than 50 percent of Americans say they are “completely satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their work. This rises to over 80 percent when we include “fairly satisfied.” This finding generally holds across income and education levels.
This shouldn’t shock us. Vocation is central to the American ideal, the root of the aphorism that we “live to work” while others “work to live.” Throughout history, America’s flexible labour markets and dynamic society have given its citizens a unique say over their work — and made work uniquely relevant to happiness. When Frederick Douglass rhapsodized about “patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work, into which the whole heart is put,” he struck the bedrock of American culture and character.
I’m a living example of the happiness vocation can bring in a flexible labour market. I was a musician from the time I was a young child. That I would do it for a living was a foregone conclusion. When I was 19, I skipped college and went on the road playing the French horn. I played classical music across the world and landed in the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra. I was probably “somewhat satisfied” with my work. But in my late 20s the novelty wore off, and I began plotting a different future. I called my father in Seattle and said: “Dad, I’ve got big news. I’m quitting music to go back to school!”
“
You can’t just drop everything,” he objected. “It’s very irresponsible.”
“
But I’m not happy,” I told him.
I was lucky — lucky to be able to change roads to one that made me truly happy. After going back to school, I spent a blissful decade as a university professor and wound up running a Washington think tank. Along the way, I learned that rewarding work is unbelievably important, and this is emphatically not about money. Economists find that money makes truly poor people happier insofar as it relieves pressure from everyday life — getting enough to eat, having a place to live, taking your kid to the doctor. But scholars like the Nobel Prize
winnerDaniel Kahnemanhave
found that once people reach a little beyond the average middle-class income level, even big financial gains don’t yield much, if any, increases in happiness. So relieving poverty brings big happiness, but income, per se, does not.
And according to the General Social Survey, nearly three-quarters of Americans wouldn’t quit their jobs even if a financial windfall enabled them to live in luxury for the rest of their lives. Those with the least education, the lowest incomes and the least prestigious jobs were actually most likely to say they would keep working, while elites were more likely to say they would take the money and run. We would do well to remember this before ridiculing “dead-end jobs.”
Assemble these clues and your brain will conclude what your heart already knew: Work can bring happiness by marrying our passions to our skills, empowering us to create value in our lives and in the lives of others. Franklin D. Roosevelt had it right: “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” In other words, the secret to happiness through work is earned success. Americans who feel they are successful at work are twice as likely to say they are very happy overall as people who don’t feel that way. And these differences persist after accounting for income and other demographics.
In sum, you can measure your earned success in any currency you choose. You can count it in dollars, sure — or in kids taught to read, habitats protected or souls saved. To pursue the happiness within our reach, we should always do our best to pour ourselves into faith, family, community, and meaningful work.
Source information
:
A Formula for Happiness
byArthur C. Brooks
Dec. 14, 2013
Available:
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/opinion/sunday/a-formula-for-happiness.html
Hint
: Online newspaper article – no “set” page numbers means that when quoting, cite the paragraph (para.) number.
Here is an example of an online newspaper article formatted as an APA-style reference list entry:
Roberts, S. (2020, April 9). Early string ties us to Neanderthals.
The New York Times
.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/science/neanderthals-fiber-string-math.htm