Madison Smith

January 15, 2016

UWRT 1102
Professor Jizi

Happiness is something that cannot be defined. Each individual person

experiences happiness in different ways. For some people, happiness may be getting a
new car or a pay raise at work. For others it may be starting a new book or watching the
sunrise over an ocean. Happiness is unique and special for each person and it cannot be
fully explained in a 500-word paper. Happiness is an emotion that most people feel at
some point in life and just like all other emotions, you cannot typically explain it until
you have experienced it.
To me personally, the feeling of being happy is made up of a bunch of little things
in my life. The people who are closest to me, my family, friends, boyfriend, they all make
me so happy in their own ways. The feeling of falling in love and being in love is
something that is a direct result of happiness. Also my faith and what I believe in is
something that always makes me happy and will make me happy for eternity. Laughing
and making someone laugh are again results of happiness. The color yellow, springtime,
and watching the Panthers dominate are all things that make me happy. All these things
do not necessarily make everyone else in the world happy and that is why you cannot
define happiness. It is significantly different for each person in this world.

Happiness is something so exhilarating and exciting and different from anything

else which is what makes it so hard to understand and fully explain. Happiness is
ultimately such a powerful and strong emotion that when you are happy, it is all you can
think about. True happiness takes away all stress and worry and it just leaves that feeling
of joy and contentment. The society we live in and our world today is all about being
happy. It seems as if the purpose of life is finding pure happiness in everything and
surrounding yourself with those things that make you happy. According to life itself, if
you are not surrounded by happiness, then whats the point anymore? Your life is
meaningless because you are not happy. This is what our world is usually telling us
everyday. To me, this is not the point of life. People and things and emotions are all great
and exciting but they cannot and will not make you happy forever. They will fail you at
some point.
When life itself fails you and you are wrapped up in not being happy, that is when
I believe you find yourself and you truly find happiness. Happiness is having hope in the
dark days and in the sad moments of life. Being happy comes from trusting and believing
in something bigger than yourself and your problems. For example, I went through a
period in my life where I was unhappy all the time. A very close friend of mine passed
away, my life fell apart, and being happy seemed like a completely different world to me.
Eventually, life went on and I had to go with it. One day I realized that there was hope for
my life, and myself, and that same hope is what I now believe in everyday. I find
happiness through that hope every single day. If I had to define happiness, that is how I
would define it. Happiness is having hope. It is realizing that through the dark tunnel of
unhappiness, depression, and despair, there is a ray of hope waiting for you at the end.

I still believe that you cannot define happiness. Your happiness and my happiness
are two completely different things. However, worldly happiness does eventually fade
and I think most of us have a moment in our life that we realize how fading happiness can
be. That is when we have to find that hope in our unhappiness and grab onto it and never
let it go. When we do, we can truly find the happiness that everyone longs for in his or
her life.

1.

First Step: Identify Your Concerns

Write down 3-5 concerns you have about your paper. (Complete and bring to peer
review session.)

1. I am concerned about being too opinionated in my paper.

2. I am concerned about not being able to connect with my readers.
3. I am concerned that my paper is too boring and doesnt have enough interesting
factors to it.

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

Starting off with your concerns, I dont believe you were too opinionated considering the
paper is what you believe happiness is after all. I also think your paper connects to
readers just fine and that it was not too boring, I was able to read through your paper
without stopping or catching myself losing interest. A place where I got confused and
could possibly use more detail is in your last paragraph . However, worldly happiness
does eventually fade and I think most of us have a moment in our life that we realize how
fading happiness can be. The transition from the previous thought to this sentence left
me a bit confused, either due to the wording or the transition. I think you did very well

describing the indescribable feeling of happiness as well as sticking to your view on it

throughout your paper Happiness is something so exhilarating and exciting and different
from anything else which is what makes it so hard to understand and fully explain.
Happiness is ultimately such a powerful and strong emotion that when you are happy, it is
all you can think about these lines in particular really stood out to me. You showed
personal presence throughout, and self-discovery with your example of losing a friend,
which also comes off as an engagement with the world.

3)

After Peer-review: Write two paragraphs

a. The first paragraph should focus on the feedback you received from your peers. What
were the peer suggestions given to you? How did you incorporate these into your revision
process? What feedback did you decide not to incorporate?

b. The second paragraph should reflect upon the feedback you provided for your peers.
Provide at least three concrete examples of the feedback you gave.

There was one peer suggestion given to me to improve my paper. My peer stated that
there was one sentence in particular that confused him. They said that the transition
between what was before that sentence and what came after it was confusing to him
while he was reading my paper. I took this into consideration and made some altercations
to my paper. Other than that, my peer stated that I used the three essentials of a personal

essay very well throughout my paper. Also, he stated that my paper was well and that I
should not worry about my concerns.
The feedback I gave to my peer was a lot like the feedback I received. The paper I
read was well thought out and I thought it really included the three essentials of a
personal essay really well. I gave positive feedback about how open and honest the writer
was and how I wanted to incorporate that more into my paper, so I did. I also commented
on how detailed the writers paper was and how well she explained everything. The only
thing I suggested to add to the paper and where I got a little confused was when the writer
was talking about how she moved from somewhere across the world and I told the writer
to talk more about that in her paper.