It was 12:30 am and I was sitting on my computer chair, looking at my computer Rereading through my first draft of my Research Project, I was on the fence about how I felt after completing it and posting it to my blog. I had 1200 words so I had completed my main goal, a thousand words. My second goal was to stay on task and to keep it relevant to the story. I thought I had done pretty well staying on task throughout my paper.
I woke up the next morning and went to school. I go through my only other class, Intro to Business, and continue on with my day until I get to my english classroom. We get to choose between getting into groups or individually presenting to the class. We chose to get into groups and my group only had two so I was put into a different group so we had more people to share with. He had also printed out a helpful questionnaire sheet to help us know what we needed to fix throughout the project. While sharing my story with my group Mr. Mangini stopped by our group to hear and help get the real answers. When he had stopped by I had just started sharing my project with my group and I had a very strong introduction but I needed to specify if the three good things gratitude process did or didn’t work. Other than that I was good for the other three questions that asked if the introduction had a hook?, did the project mention the three good things gratitude process? And if the intro included the TPS thesis statement? Knowing this actually really helped me on the revision part of the research project. But, it also gave me a better sense of what Mr. Mangini would want me to fix since he was in my group at the time that I was presenting and he was helping us get to the right answer so we didn’t sugarcoat anything. Unfortunately my findings section of my paper wasn’t as good as my introduction but, at least I have a good portion of my project done and something to build off of for my findings. I just had to fix some of the things that I was missing or didn’t give enough details such as a topic sentence that transitioned into the argument, I didn’t argue one point at a time, as well as not referencing specific journal entries and using them to help strengthen my research project. There is another part that I could add more information too and that’s explaining the specific ways that the three good things had changed my day, along with my thought process. I wanted to use this blog to reiterate the things that I would like to critique in my research project before I upload my final piece.
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Ok so for this blog I’m going to be talking about my research and what I did wrong. In my Literary Review section of my project I had written about definitions that were from a online dictionary. We weren’t supposed to get it from a dictionary site so I went and did more research. I researched 2 definitions and got better results from a more credible source.
My first source came from a blog that was posted on Stephen Joseph’s website. In the bog it says “Looking for similarities and differences across the six theoretical perspectives in how they defined well-being, he identified fourteen distinct and recurring constructs that are used to describe well-being: happiness means feeling happy and cheerful, vitality means feeling energetic/full of energy, calmness means feeling calm/relaxed, optimism means being optimistic and hopeful, involvement means feeling completely involved and engaged in what you do, self-awareness means being in touch with how you feel, self-acceptance means accepting yourself the way you are, self-worth means liking yourself, competence means feeling highly effective at what you do, development means feeling you are improving, developing, advancing, purpose means having a purpose and a mission in life, significance means feeling that what you do is worthwhile, congruence means feeling that what you do is consistent with how you see yourself, and connection means feeling close and connected to the people around you.” My second source came from a blog and video of Robert Emmons speaking posted on his website. In the post, he highlights 4 of the many reason gratitude is good for you. They were gratitude allows us to celebrate the present, it blocks toxic, negative emotions and grateful people are more stress resistant. Another topic he talks about is the effects that gratitude can have on someone. The first out of the three is physically it’s proven to improve the immune system, less bothered by aches and pains, lower blood pressure, people tend to exercise more and care about their health, sleep longer and feel more refreshed when awakening. The second is psychologically people have a better sense of positive emotion, they are more alert, alive and awake, experience more joy and pleasure, along with a more optimistic outlook and happiness. The third and final is the social part of people’s lives helping them feel more helpful, generous and compassionate, more forgiving and outgoing. This really helped me get the information that I needed to prove that the three good things gratitude process did help me. Research Paper: My Writing Process
For this week I had missed this Thursday's class because of unexpected car problems but I was in class on Tuesday. The week before Mr. Mangini had asked us to answer a couple of questions before this weeks Tuesday class and they were What is MLA?, What is an in-text citation?, What is a Works Cited page?, What is Plagiarism? And Why is it important to cite source materials in an MLA research project? Before I wrote the answers to these questions I thought about them for a little while beforehand so I could try and answer the ones I thought I knew. That didn’t get me too far so I looked them up online to try to find the answers and they very quickly popped up, right below my search I saw all of my answers. When I reached question number four I thought to myself “wait so for all the other questions I’ve been plagiarizing because I wasn’t citing my sources beneath.” but I continued on finishing my questions anyway. During Tuesday's class we talked about different ways people can cite information wrong and I couldn't help but think “there’s so many ways you can plagiarize.” After class had finished i went home and continued to work on my research paper and every time that I looked anything up I made sure that I kept all of the pages that I even read just in case if I reference anything or even thought of a sentence that was remotely related. I continued to answer the questions. I say to myself “What research showed gratitude doesn’t improve well-being?” I immediately went to my three good things journal and looked through the list for something that reminded me of the process not working. There was a couple of things on the list that reminded me of other bad things that happened through that week. I tried to describe the way I was feeling at the time, the best way I could with as little as background information as possible. In conclusion, I don’t think it worked that well. I didn’t feel any improved happiness. I did notice that I show gratitude toward my coworkers by buying everyone munchkins. Although, It could have been that I only wrote two good things per day instead of three. Either way, my conclusion is that it did slightly improve my well-being and I will always remember to think about the better side of things. This weeks post is going to be about my Research Paper. There weren’t any articles that we were required to reading or many guidelines other than to write about my research paper and how it was going so far.
I decided to started with the question part of the paper to build the body of the paper. I thought that I would be able to make the whole paper flow better if I knew what I needed to flow into. I copy and pasted the outline into my google document and read over all the questions before I started and thought it would be best to look up the ones that I couldn’t explain first. So far they were what is positive psychology?, what is well-being? and what is gratitude? While researching about these I realized that I am grateful for some of my coworkers since they’ve been getting more experienced. The day after I had bought everyone munchkins and I realized I was showing gratitude towards everyone but doing this small gesture. Without me writing it down and remembering I wouldn’t have realized that I was helping my well-being by doing things like these throughout my week. Just this past week I had bought my family dinner and took my father out to his favorite restaurant to eat. I’ve been trying to continue with my “three intrinsic goals” and improve my well-being. I personally think it’s been working because I’ve been focusing on the good rather than the bad that also happens. This weeks blogs going to be composed of a week of thing that felt good to me and made me happy. Before composing this I read a few articles What is Positive Pyschology & Why Is it Important? (Positive Psychology Program), Greater Good in Action: Science-Based Practices for a Meaningful Life (UC Berkeley's Project Home Page) and Three Good Things (Greater Good in Action).
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