When I asked one of my friends to recommend me an amazing piece of music, she told me to listen to the A Capella group Pentatonix. At first I was hesitant because the assignment was to listen to an amazing piece of music and Pentatonix does covers of music written by other people. But as soon as I started to listen to their music I began to understand why they still fit the assignment. While Pentatonix sings other artists songs they re-work them and make the songs their own. Each piece is unique while still recognizable and every singer in the group gives the performance their all. The end result is truly fantastic music. After making this discovery I have come to the conclusion that how much a piece effects you and in what way a piece effects you is determined not necessarily by the lyrics or melody but by the soul that the performer puts in.
It is not necessarily about the song, it is how the piece is sung.

The piece of music that I chose to listen to every night before bed was Beyonce's version of Ave Maria. Listening to this song at night was very calming and improved my mood before I fell asleep. I really enjoyed doing this assignment and I was surprised at how greatly the music impacted me. I slept better at night after calming down and it was something to look forward to after doing homework. Ave Maria also has a personal connection for me to my grandmother who past away several years ago who I have been missing very much lately. Listening to this song at night helped me feel closer to her and while it made me sad, by the end of the song I didn't miss her as much. I believe that music impacts our lives greatly because it has an amazing ability to make us feel all kinds of emotions. These emotions then play a large role in how we act and respond to certain situations.

I chose to interview several of my friends and family about their opinions on male-female friendships. I interviewed my mother, my brother (Dan), and three of my friends (Lydia, Eric, and Madison). My interview with my mother was simple as she and I agreed on this topic. We both believed that male-female relationships are completely possible and are not always threatened by romantic feelings, even if some are. I got the same answers from my little brother. The majority of his friends are girls and though these relationships are young and he developed feelings for some of his female friends in the past, most of his friendships are still simply friendships. It is for this reason that he agreed with me, males and females can simply be friends. The last of the people I interviewed who shared my view was my friend Eric, who is just that, a friend. It was for this reason that he believed males and females can be friends without romantic pressure, because he and I share that relationship. My friends Lydia and Madison both said that they believed eventually male-female relationships fall apart or develop into something more due to romantic pressures. Madison explained that she feels this way because she and her best guy friend recently began a romantic relationship. I argued that I have been friends with Eric my whole life and we have never been more than friends. She said for all I know he has liked my as more than a friend, I said I would have known, and we continued to argue for almost half an hour. Lydia and I also spent a significant amount of time arguing our points without making any headway. In the end we had to agree to disagree on the subject.

5 Things I Have Always Wanted to do With my Friends
- sneak out of the house
- sing in the rain
- play in a sprinkler
- pull an all nighter
- sleep outside

The item from my list that my friends and I did was sneak out of the house at night. The night as a whole was spontaneous. A group of us planned a sleepover last minuet and spent several hours running between friends houses in the middle of the night. When we finally settled into someones living room 10 of us watched funny youtube videos until we cried. Once the majority of the group had gone home there were only three of us left huddled on a sofa for the night. It didn't take long for us to realize that despite the fact that it was almost 2:00 in the morning, we were far from ready to give in for the night. That was when my friend suggested we sneak out to meet one of our friends. Before any of us could second guess the decision we were wrapped in sweatshirts and half way down the street. We meet our friend and spent about an hour talking and walking around. When we got home, we watched Disney movies and ate pasta until we fell asleep. Even though we didn't do anything particularly exciting while we were out or at all during the night, we had fun. We bonded over our adventure, though you can hardly call it an adventure, and the risk of getting caught. My friends didn't think the night was nearly as exciting because they are a bit more practiced in the art of sneaking out, though they did agree it was fun. One of my friends even told me that half the fun was watching my reaction to sneaking out and getting away with it. I decided to take this as a complement and I can't wait until we are able to go on another adventure.

I spent a weekend playing the role of Yes Man several months ago with a group of my friends from the Sharon High School Theater Company. I spent the weekend saying "yes" to as many situations as was reasonable without causing me too much stress or skipping my shifts at work. I had one of the best weekends that I had had in a long time, although it was stressful. I took chances that I wouldn't normally have been willing to take and I talked to people I wouldn't normally have spoken to. I met many new people that I am still close to and I made new memories. The stress I experienced over the weekend was the result of my missing my only non-manditory dance class,  this always causes me a significant amount of anxiety but the over all experience was worth it. As a whole, it was without a doubt a positiveevent for me, and the few offers I did have to turn down (sleeping over a friends house and blowing off my shift at work) I regreted not being able to accept. The people that I spent my week with noticed that I was considerably more relaxed than normal which made me more fun to be around. I absolutly feel closer to the people I was with and find that I am more willing to take chances as a result of this experience.

This past weekend I decided to spend time with my little brother working on a piece for our dance class. In some ways this was an excellent activity for us to do together and in some ways it was exactly the opposite. On one hand we create fantastic work together and and enjoy rehearsing what we create. Unfortunately, we have a tendency to fight quite a bit while we choreograph. One of us usually storms out of the room at some point but we are always drawn back together by the need to finish our piece. All in all the experience is usually beneficial for both of us and we enjoy working together, otherwise we wouldn't do it. Our only barrier for us spending more time together working was that we got tired around 10:30 pm and my brother had to go to sleep. The best option for us to spend more time together would be to work on pieces on Sundays and Fridays. We actually have plans to choreograph a new number on Friday. This week for the first time my little brother will take the lead choreographing and I am only allowed to help when he gets stuck. I hope that this will mean less fighting although I won't know until we try it. With any luck, our choreography sessions will become a ritual part of our week and we will get to spend more time together.

This week I made an effort to thank the janitors in school and my teachers more often than usual. It was easy to thank my teachers because it is something I usually do but the janitors were more difficult because they aren't expecting to be thanked. This means that when passing them in the hallway they don't slow down or stop to share conversation, they may say "hi" in passing but I found it difficult to slip "thank you for cleaning up the classrooms everyday" into about one second. Eventually at the end of the day I was able to talk to one of the janitors and thank him. He seemed happy to be thanked for his work and the look on his face made me smile.  My teachers seemed to enjoy being thanked but not as much as the janitor did, my best guess as to the reason would be that I think teachers most likely get thanked more often.

Someone from my life who inspires me is my friend Emily who I danced with many years ago. She has been my inspiration for the last five years of my life in almost everything I do because of her strength and perseverance. She has endured unimaginable pain both mentally and physically and has never given up. It is Emily's determination, persistence, and refusal to admit defeat that has always inspired me to push myself. Over the many years that I have known her, I have done my best to be like my friend and mentor. My strengths are also determination, persistence, and a refusal to admit defeat which I believe I developed from watching Emily, I am also a perfectionist and very epithetic which I believe to be among my greatest strengths. I think that my determination, persistence, and empathy would be most helpful in the world and would help me to make a difference. My empathy would be beneficial doing charity work and my determination and persistence have always been beneficial when I need to get things done.

Unit Assessment Write

 

If I were to choose one person in my life to help by creating a happiness plan it would be my little brother. In many ways he lives what would be considered a healthy and fulfilling life. He follows his heart and does what makes him happy even if it isn't common ( he is a competitive dancer), and he surrounds himself with friends who don't judge him his hobbies. Ideally, he would also be self confident and as carefree as possible. He would not be burdened by society's views on appearance. Unfortunately this is not all true of my little brother.

He has a tendency to be very self conscious about his weight and he lets this get in the way of his amazing personality. When he first began gaining weight he was only slightly bothered by it, but more recently he has begun to let it interfere more with his personality. He is very careful about what he wears and always asks if he looks chubby during the day. I believe that this change has come from a growing realization of the way our society views being overweight. He never cared much before because he knew that his weight didn't make him a different person. However, now that he has started middle school, he has begun to see that when he meets new people they make snap judgments based on appearance, even if they don't mean to. He is visibly gloomy and upset by how he looks and I would like to help him to lead a happier life, unconcerned with his appearance. 

 In order for my little brother to live a happier life he needs to shed his insecurities and learn to accept how he looks or lose weight while still being comfortable with the way he is. I have learned from personal experience that even though people do make judgments on appearance, those judgments can be influenced by confidence in one's image. If you are happy with the way you look, people are less likely to notice the feature it is you are insecure about. I would want to teach my little brother how to think positively about himself and how to ignore the voice in his head that tells him he isn't perfect. Hopefully then he wouldn't be so concerned with the way he looks and what other people say about his appearance. 

The main happiness strategy that I would teach my little brother would be cultivating optimism. I believe that this strategy would be most effective for my little brother because hopefully replacing his negative thoughts about his body image with positive ones would boost his self confidence and make him more comfortable with the way he looks. I would instruct my little brother to take any negative thought he has about the way he looks throughout the day and replace with a positive one. He would have to say the positive comment to himself three times for every negative comment he thinks. He would also only be allowed to use a scale once a week and any time he looked in a mirror he would have to think something positive about the way he looks. I would also give him  inspirational quotes to carry around in his pocket that he could look at when he feels sad (I have already done this). Hopefully this would become less forced over time and he would start to think positive things about himself without prompting and on a regular basis. I would be able to enforce my happiness plan at home with him and be able to help with positive feed back. 

I believe that the biggest struggle my little brother would face in his happiness plan would be when he was at school. However, I think that keeping inspirational quotes with him could help him stick with the plan through the school day. I would also be able to help by adding positive notes into his binders and lunches, something my friends have done for me before that I have found very beneficial. In time I think my little brother would find himself to be happier and more comfortable with how he looks by following my happiness plan.

When I made a list of five things I was afraid of attempting because of failure, the most reasonable on the list for me to try was talking to my parents about the possibility of me majoring in dance in college. The conversation took about a week of dropping hints and seemingly meaningless stories about how much I love to dance. While the conversation did not end in the best possible way, it was not a complete failure. My parents basically said they didn't want to pay college tuition just for me to dance, but they are fine with me minoring in dance as long as I major in something else. The response was more than I had hopped for and enough for me to work with. I am glad I overcame my fear of failure long enough to confront my parents, even if it was mostly because I knew it had to be done sooner or later. I am not sure if I will have the courage to attempt the other four things on my list but the results of this exercise have been encouraging.

My list of 75 simple pleasures

1. smiling
2. sleeping
3. listening to music
4. dancing with friends
5. talking to friends
6. achieving a goal
7. stretching
8. coloring
9. watching T.V
10. making someone smile
11. flirting
12. singing in the shower
13. playing cards
14. eating dinner with your family
15. taking colorful notes
16. shopping for a new season
17. drinking tea
18. making the perfect cup of hot chocolate, and giving it to someone else
19. winning
20. giving or receiving a hug
21. performing
22. sitting in the sun on a beach
23. being lifted
24. eating fruit straight off the plant
25. eating chocolate
26. playing in the mud
27. running through the forest
28. hiking
29. breathing morning air
30. swimming in a river
31. reading quietly
32. taking a bubble bath
33. sitting in a sauna
34. sitting in a hot tub
35. sitting in front of a fire
36. cuddling
37. thunder storms
38. dancing in the rain
39. singing in the rain
40. sitting in the grass in the sun
41. sitting in the rain
42. running through a field
43. playing board games
44. staying up late with friends
45. reading in the bath tub
46. stage lights
47. applause
48. dancing alone
49. dancing with strangers
50. teaching a child to dance
51. coloring
52. when rain hits pavement that is so hot steam rises off the street
53. fluffy blankets
54. making friends
55. changing your hair
56. painting your nails fun colors
57. eating ice cream
58. wearing fuzzy socks
59. talking to old friends
60. wearing new lipstick
61. reading in the sun
62. losing weight
63. getting asked to prom
64. talking to someone new
65. having a dance party
66. seeing old friends
67. making lists
68. completing lists
69. making a decision
70. jumping off a dock into a lake
71. losing and being proud of yourself anyway
72. finishing a project early
73. wearing dresses
74. eating candy
75. finishing a workout

Over the course of the day I did roughly 30 of my listed simple pleasures including smiling, listening to music, talking with friends, reading in the sun, reading in front of the fire, watching T.V, making someone else smile, drinking tea, and many others. I wouldn't have described my day "beautiful" but it was better than my average day. Taking a few minutes to do something like color was a refreshing break from my busy schedule. I found it difficult at first to do something that didn't seem productive but after several of the simple pleasures had a positive effect on my mood it was easier to take time to do the others.

I have always loved animals and when I was nine years old what I wanted most in the world was a bunny. After begging my parents, saving my money, and spending hours with the rabbit at the local 4H club I chose and purchased my rabbit, Smokey. It only took me about a month to adapt to Smokey and he soon seemed like more of a burden than a blessing. I did learn from my mistake however, and I don't keep animals that require more car that your average fish. As much as I love animals, especially fury ones, I adapt to them to quickly and it is better for everyone if I leave them in the hands of a responsible pet shop. If I could change what I did, I would have chosen to leave Smokey with the 4H club. I was always happiest when I was playing with him in the barn and day dreaming about when he would be mine. It would have been better for both me and Smokey if I had left him with the 4H club. If nothing else, I learned from Smokey that my happiness came from being with him, not actually owning or taking care of him.

Over the course of a week I found myself mostly complaining about feeling tired, stressed, hungry, and having no free time. The solutions I came up with were to get more sleep, take on fewer responsibilities and bring healthier snacks to school. Bringing healthier snacks to school defiantly improved my mood because I felt better about what I was eating, so I would eat more and not be as hungry during the day. I did not however, implement the solution of giving up any of my responsibilities because I have already made commitments to various teams and groups promising my participation. I will admit that I also do not intend to make fewer commitments in the future because of the importance of the commitments I make. I dance and do theater to make myself happy, I work to pay for dance, and I give my best effort in school to earn good grades. My cramped schedule unfortunately means that I also cannot go to bed much before midnight without neglecting homework or studying. I unfortunately found that this exercise was not effective in significantly improving my level of happiness due to my inability to properly implicate the solutions I came up with to my life.

I believe that the majority of my happiness comes from outside circumstances because of how much my happiness depends on the activities I participate in. On days I don't have dance or play practice (which are few and far between), or I don't get enough sleep, I find I am miserable regardless of how the rest of my day went. I am rarely happy simply because I feel happy or because of internal circumstances. I am more commonly either looking forward to, or dreading, an event later in my day. This event, good or bad, will set the tone for the rest of my day. Generally speaking the only two activities that will consistently make me happy, and probably the biggest two outside influences on my happiness, are dance or play practice. As a result I try to include these two activities in my schedule as much as possible. Unfortunately, these activities, particularly play practice, are not very stable sources of happiness due to their ever changing schedules. For example, this happens to be "hell week" for the student directed shows, which I am a part of. What this means is we have long, intense rehearsals every day after school, which make me very happy. However, this also means that by next Monday, the shows will be over, and I will not have any rehearsals until the next season starts. I am dreading weeks I will have leading up to the next shows because I am sure I will have a difficult time finding happiness on a day to day basis. I believe that deriving my happiness from internal circumstances is a skill I should work on so I am not miserable between seasons or activities. Hopefully I will eventually not be as dependent on my schedule for happiness as I am now.

My signature strengths came out as appreciation of beauty and excellence, capacity to love and be loved, curiosity and interest in the world, bravery and valor, and creativity, ingenuity, and originality. I was surprised that capacity to love and be loved and bravery and valor were in my top five strengths because I often have difficulty building relationships in my life to the point of love and I'm not usually brave enough to take many chances. I have learned from this test that I actually am not authentic in my actions the majority of the time. I find myself pretending to be friends with people that drive me insane or purposely not sharing my opinion because I know the people I am with don't agree. I see a lack of authenticity particularly in my style, when trying to decide what to wear in the morning instead of thinking what do I want to wear, I think what would this or that person wear, or what is in style? I was shocked to uncover this about myself because I thought that I have been true to myself but I have started to realize that that isn't always true. While I openly express my opinions about things I find beautiful or fantastic and I am very curious about things around me, my actions always don't match up to my other "strengths". I have already explained the contradiction between my personality and actions and my capacity to love and be loved as well as my bravery and valor. I also find that while creativity, ingenuity, and originality was one of my top five strengths I often have a difficult time coming up with truly original or ideas. I find the difference in the results of the strength test and my personality to be puzzling.

revised and edited, final love course response

 

I believe that a person inside the machine would be happy because they are fed the experiences that envoke bliss, however, I do not believe I would enter the experience machine. The machine would dilude a person's brain into believing they were happy, but any and all emotions the person feels are fake even if they don't seem that way. The same is true for any experiences a person would have in the machine. Know matter how real events may feel, they are not part of reality. A person inside the machine would not actually be in love or making contributions to humanity, and it is for this reason i don't believe I would enter the machine. I would not want to give up any possibility of actually having a positive impact on the world for engineered bliss, know matter how realistic it may seem. I don't believe that my life would have been a worthwhile one if I did not leave the world a better place than it was when I arrived. Know matter how small or seemingly insignificant, I want to have made an impact on the world in the end of my time. I would never get to do this if I were trapped inside the machine, even if I believed that I was. I would never give up the chance to make an actual difference in the world for a life trapped inside a machine with know hope of ever being able to fulfill my goals.

The concept of being trapped inside the machine would also be a compelling reason not to enter it. Even though I may believe I was blissfully happy, simply knowing that it was know longer in my power to decide if I could ever leave would be extremely distressing to me. I would not want to trap myself inside the machine for the rest of my life, regardless of how the device could make me feel. I don't believe I could bring myself to completely give up control of my life or resign myself to the fact that everything I felt or did in the machine would be fake, I would never have a real experience again. I also believe that I would not be the only person to have this reaction to the idea of the experience machine. I believe that the negative reaction to knowing any emotion would be fake, even if it felt real, and the idea of being trapped reveals that humans want to be able to control their destiny and potential happiness for better or for worse.

I do not personally believe that I would enter the machine. Simply based on the concept of the machine and what it would potentially do I believe anyone would be happy once inside. The machine would make your brain believe you were happy and so you would be, but any and all emotions you feel in the machine are fake even if they don't seem that way. The same is true for any experiences you would have in the machine, know matter how real they may feel they are not. You would not actually be in love or contributing to humanity, and it is for this reason i don't believe I would enter the machine. I would not want to give up any possibility of actually having a positive impact on the world for engineered bliss, know matter how realistic it may seem. I don't believe that I would have lived a happy life if I had not left the world a better way than I had arrived on it. Know matter how small or seemingly insignificant, I would want to have made an impact on the world. I would never get to do this if I were trapped inside the machine, even if I believed that I was.

The concept of being trapped inside the machine would also be a compelling reason not to enter it. Even though I may be blissfully happy, simply knowing that it was not in my power to decide if I could ever leave would be distressing to me. I would not want to trap myself inside the machine for the rest of my life, regardless of how the device could make me feel. I believe that this reaction to knowing any emotion would be fake even if it felt real and the idea of being trapped reveals that humans want to be able to control their destiny and potential happiness for better or for worse.

I did it!