3 Chapter 3: Happiness
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Purpose |
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Warm-up |
Your brain actually remembers information better if it warms up. You warm up your brain by preparing it for the academic activity that it must do. If you are preparing for a discussion, for example, you can ask yourself, “Why is my instructor going to have a discussion? What do they hope I will ‘get out’ of this discussion?”
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Work out |
In academics, the purpose of the workout is to learn the material you need to know in order to be successful in the class. This might involve reading, jotting down ideas you might wish to share in discussion, or taking notes on a lecture.
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Cool Down |
In academics, the purpose of a cool down is to do two things—one, make some decisions about what you did during your workout that is important enough to remember and two, plan ahead. What will you need to study tomorrow? What confuses you and how can you get help with your confusion?
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Warm Up:
What makes you happy? Define happiness. How happy are you? Is it important to be happy? If so, why? If not, why not?
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Academic Skill: Focus on Lecture
In order to prepare to read the articles in this chapter, you will be listening to several lectures first.
Warm up to Listen to a Lecture
Usually, the lectures you will hear in class do not have titles, but this one does. Use it to get clues about what you will hear. Based just on the title, brainstorm what this lecture might be about before you even listen to it.
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Make sure you write the title of the lecture across the top of your page and put today’s date.
Work Out during Lecture
In Chapter 1, you learned about several strategies to take notes successfully during a lecture.
Make a Plan
When you are ready, watch the lecture.
While you are watching it, do your best to use the two suggestions you settled on. If you fall behind, don’t worry—this is practice, and, since it is a recorded lecture, you can stop and rewind. Do your best.
Cool Down from Listening to a Lecture
Once you are done listening to the lecture, go back over your notes and fill in additional information that you remember but did not get a chance to write down. Next, try one of the following suggestions you learned about in chapter one in the Cool Down section.
After you have completed your cool down activity, switch notes with a classmate to see how your notes are different from his or hers.
When you are done with all of that, go back and watch the lecture again. Take a different color pen and jot down the information that you missed the first time through. Pay attention to how much information you did get down the first time you heard the lecture and notice how much more information you are adding the second time.
Academic Skill: Focus on Reading
As a reminder, here is the overview again of the process you can use to read the articles in this chapter.
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Activity |
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Warm-up |
To warm up your brain, spend a few minutes looking over the material you need to read. Read the headings and subheadings. Look at graphics and pictures if there are any. Ask yourself “What will I be learning in this reading?” “What ideas seem to be important?”
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Work out |
To work out in reading, you need to read! But it isn’t that simple. You need to have a note taking strategy that will allow you to do two things: 1) Figure out what information is most important and 2) Remember that information.
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Cool Down |
To cool down in reading, see what you can remember about the reading by stating main ideas in your own words, telling a friend what you learned or asking yourself “Which ideas did I read tonight are so important they might end up on an exam?” You can also make a list of things that confused you that you can ask your instructor or a tutor.
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Warm up to Reading
The three strategies described below should be used before you actually read. You might wish to do just one strategy, or it might make sense to use more than one.
Reading Activity #1
Use the Pre-Reading Strategies for the following article:
You can click on this link or copy and paste it into a browser.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/happiness_the_hard_way
Work out while Reading
Once you have finished the Pre-Reading strategies, take some time to use the During Reading Strategies as you read the above article.
Cool Down after Reading
Take some time to complete the After Reading Strategies on this same article now.
Reading Activity #2
Use the ‘warm up, work out, and cool down’ strategies to read the following article.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/happy_life_different_from_meaningful_life
Reading Activity #3:
Use the ‘warm up, work out, and cool down’ strategies to read the following article.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/four_ways_happiness_can_hurt_you
Academic Skill: Focus on Writing Academic EssaYS
Critical Essay:
Combine the main ideas and supporting points of the three articles you just read into a summary.
Combine your annotations into a reflection response to the article.
Analyze the arguments in each. What should a person do to achieve happiness?
A good college writer warms up, works out, then cools down. Here is how that process applies to writing college-level papers:
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Activity |
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Warm-up |
To warm up your brain, carefully read the prompt. Think about these questions: What information should be in my introduction? What information should be in the body of my paper? How will I end my paper? Take a few notes about what you think you should do and then re-read the prompt. Do your ideas still seem to make sense?
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Work out |
To work out in writing, you need to write your paper! This will involve selecting strategies that will help you make your point most efficiently.
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Cool Down |
To cool down in writing re-read what you have written and re-read the prompt. Make sure your writing choices still fit the prompt. Ask yourself “If a stranger were to read my paper over my shoulder, would it make sense?”
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It might help you write academic essays once you know that all academic essays have qualities in common. Once you understand that, it is much easier to decide how to approach a paper assignment. Think of the graphic below as a “paper map.” The boxes represent paragraphs and the descriptions will tell you what the general goals are for each paragraph. Dotted lines represent the different parts of a paragraph. The “paper map” shows you the parts of an academic essay in the order they should appear in your paper. In other words, the thesis statement should be at the end of the introductory paragraph. When you write an academic essay, you need to follow the “rules” of academic essay writing just like, when you play a sport, you need to follow the rules of the game.
Before you actually begin to write your paper, there are three things to consider that will help you decide how to approach your paper.
What were you told to do? Make sure to carefully read the prompt you were given. Does it give you information about what the instructor wants?
What are your goals?
What are your preferences? If the prompt does not provide you with information about what strategy to use, and several strategies might help you achieve your goal, then you can choose the goal that work best for you.
Working Out while Writing a Paper
The charts below describe the strategies you might use in three parts of your paper—the establishing authority part of the introduction, the evidence part of the body paragraph and the evaluation part of the body paragraph. Your job will be to select the strategies that are most likely to help you achieve your goal.
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Strategies for Establishing Authority Remember, the goal of establishing authority is to provide the reader with the information they need to understand your paper and prove to them that you are worth listening to. The following strategies will help you do that. |
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Summary |
If you are responding to an essay, a video, a lecture or a book, you might choose to summarize its main ideas. This will help your reader understand the source you are responding to and prove that you are an expert—if you read a source and can summarize it, then you are an expert.
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Narrative or short personal story |
If you are writing an essay that relates in some way to your life or the life or someone you know, you might choose to tell a personal story to establish authority. Doing so will prove to your reader that, because you have lived this, you are an expert.
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Facts and History |
Sometimes statistics, percentages, dates or a brief historical overview are the best way to help your reader not only understand the issue you are writing about, but to show them you know your stuff.
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Definition |
If you are writing about something your reader might not understand, define it so he or she will be able to understand your paper. When you are able to define a word or concept for your reader, they will see you as an expert.
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Description |
If you are writing an essay that relates to your personal life, you may choose to describe something significant to your life such as an object or an emotion.
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The chart below lists different strategies you can choose from when you present evidence in your body paragraphs. Notice that many of the strategies are the same ones you can use to establish authority.
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Strategies for Presenting Evidence Remember, the goal of presenting evidence is to provide the reader with the information they need to agree with the claims you are making in your paper. Evidence proves to the reader that what you are saying is true. The following strategies will help you do that. Note that many of the strategies are the same ones you can use to establish authority. |
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Summary |
If you would like to use the ideas in an essay, a video, a lecture or a book to help you prove your point, you will need to summarize its main ideas in the evidence part of your body paragraphs. This will help your reader understand the source you are responding to and prove that you are an expert—if you read a source and can summarize it, then you are an expert.
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Narrative or short personal story |
If you are writing an essay that relates in some way to your life or the life or someone you know, you might choose to tell a personal story for your evidence. Doing so will prove to your reader that, because you have lived this, you are an expert.
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Facts and History |
Sometimes using statistics, percentages, dates or a brief historical overview are the best evidence you can give your reader to help him/her see that your viewpoint is worth considering.
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Definition |
If you are writing about something your reader might not understand, define it so he or she will be able to understand your paper. When you are able to define a word or concept for your reader, your evidence will make much more sense.
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Description |
If you are writing an essay that relates to your personal life, you may choose to describe something significant to your life such as an object or an emotion.
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Quotes from Experts |
Sometimes the words of an expert is the best way for you to prove your point. Using quotes from sources is a great way to prove your point.
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Compare/ Contrast |
In the evidence part of your body paragraphs, you might choose to compare/ contrast two or more things, people, places, concepts or events in order to make your point.
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The chart below lists the strategies you can use when you evaluate your body paragraph. Remember, EACH body paragraph needs it’s own evaluation. The strategies below are possible ways you can evaluate your paragraph.
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Strategies for Evaluating Your Paragraph Remember, the goal of the evaluation part of a paragraph is to explain to your reader why or how the evidence you presented proves the topic sentence you wrote. The following strategies will make it clear to your reader what exactly your evidence proves. In shorter academic essays, the evaluation is the last 2-4 sentences in a body paragraph. |
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Why is this evidence important?
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Explain why a person, concept, event, etc. is important. What will people be able to do or understand as a result of knowing the information you just presented?
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How is the information presented in the evidence part of the paragraph related? |
Sometimes readers don’t understand the purpose of your paragraph unless you tell them directly. If your goal is to explain how two things are connected, similar or different, you will need to point that out at the end of your paragraph.
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How did the information presented in the evidence in the evidence part of the paragraph affect me or someone else?
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Explain how a person, event, idea, etc. affected a person, a group of people or a series of events. Sometimes, it isn’t clear to a reader how something affected you (if you are writing a personal essay) or someone or something else until you explain it.
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What did I learn as a result of the evidence presented? How did I change?
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Explain what you or someone else learned or how you or someone else changed as a result of an experience.
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Cooling down After Writing a Paper
After you write your paper, re-read it carefully. To do this, go back to the “Structure of an Academic Essay” graphic and go through your paper section by section. Do you establish authority? Do you have a thesis statement where it belongs? Do you have a topic sentence for each body paragraph? Do you present evidence and write an evaluation for each paragraph?
Finally, re-read the prompt. Make sure your paper meets the instructor’s expectations.
Eventually, your instructor will read your rough draft and provide comments for you. You will then have to revise. It is not uncommon for students to re-write papers five or six times before “getting it right.” Be patient with the revision process!