Measuring Happiness
00:00- Happiness… Oh man, that’s a-that’s a big question
00:03- [upbeat music]
00:11- Many have the goal of being “happy” but very few know what “happiness” actually means. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “happy” as “feeling or showing pleasure or contentment.''. From this definition, we can deduce that happiness is a state and that it is not permanent, but also not fleeting. Happiness is linked to almost every other aspect of life and is relevant to people of all cultures. Measuring happiness is equally as important- this measurement is how people perceive their own happiness and impacts their sense of wellbeing and quality of life. So how do people measure happiness? What does happiness mean to different people?
00:55- What does happiness mean to me… Sheesh, that’s-that’s a loaded question-yeah I-I kind of had an idea this was where this was going but I… define happiness…
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01:07- I don’t think that’s a quantifiable answer… and I don’t have an answer
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01:12- I think happiness now really just is surrounding myself with people that um I enjoy being around but not only that, I think that when you get to a point where you’re continuing to learn and you’re continuing to grow, that’s also really important for me and so happiness is not only surrounding yourself with people you enjoy being around but that push you to be a better version of yourself and I think as long as you enjoy those moments and the times you have with those people, that’s-that’s kinda happiness for me
01:43- Happiness is… happiness is a warm hug, happiness is a joke, happiness is your favorite TV show, happiness is family time, happiness is a phone call giving you a job offer…
02:01- Happiness? I think happiness for me on a personal level would mean being in tune with myself, uh with my surroundings, and my emotions
02:12- Well I guess it depends cause there’s like different kinds of happiness- there’s like- you know like mellow, chill just general being content um… and then there’s the more like the electric, you’re in this moment and you never want to leave it, you can’t stop laughing um if your life were a movie this would be an important scene kind of- kind of feeling um and then there’s a more general like I feel fulfilled and like loved and know myself and I’m not like plagued in the head or in life by something at this moment.
03:05- Happiness is like this intangible feeling where almost inside you feel like everything is right and no matter what it is kind of going on in your life whether it’s your friends or your family or your schoolwork, or your actual work you just kind of feel comfortable with everything and you don’t feel nervous or worried or anxious or scared or anything else in the world is like kind of throwing at you, but you feel comfortable both in your own skin and in your external environment and I think that’s what happiness is.
03:36- I would like to think that my views on happiness have been researched pretty well by a professor at Penn who’s name is Martin Seligman and he has a 3-stage model of happiness which includes- basically the first stage is feeling pleasurable experiences, which are very important to me uh the second stage being fully engaged in life and he calls it, when you’re fully engaged, that you’re in a state of flow, and the third or highest level is having some meaning in a life. What’s most important and I feel very fortunate that I’ve been blessed with having that kind of a what I would call happiness on all three levels.
04:32- Yeah it’s-it’s weird how like Psych Zach and Regular Zach have sort of converged a little bit um I think that before starting this line of research on competition and on competitiveness, I would have probably said that um happiness- no I think I still agree with this, I think that happiness is largely built on uh relationships, on connection, having community and um I think that most of the things that we do in life that we think are in pursuit of happiness are really in pursuit of community, are really in pursuit of companionships of-of uh relationships
05:16- I think I measure my happiness based on my like different interactions with people and kind of my energy level so when I’m happier I think I tend to be more like energetic more outgoing more willing to talk and engage with people but when I’m less happy or having a bad day my energy is definitely off and I feel a little more closed off
05:36- I think I’m best able to do that like right before like right when I go to bed I’ll just be lying down and I kind of think about my day um and then I’ll think about like what went well, uh like what didn’t necessarily go well like you know you’re alone right? So it’s it’s a really good time to just be somewhat introspective and just think about like how happy was I today and like
05:55- I try not to quantify my happiness, cause that is a bad tendency of mine- to overquantify and overanalyze thing and um I think that’s part of the beautiful thing about happiness is that often-times I won’t realize I was happy until after the fact um for me happiness is when I’m not overthinking anything when I’m calm and I’m focused and present and in the moment. Um and the way I measure it is I try to keep like a little bit of a journal about all the new things I’ve done this semester, I try to reflect back on happy moments, especially in hard times, uh and I try to really center myself when I’m in a moment that’s especially pleasant or meaningful.
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06:33- I can also measure happiness when I feel especially like carefree um and see that I’m like grinning a lot or smiling without even noticing it so when I’m smiling unconsciously, I’m probably like really happy but it doesn’t feel like a special moment
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06:48- I actually um I have a survey that I made for myself and I take this survey at the very end of every day and on this survey I ask myself: how happy were you today, how sad were you today, how optimistic, how clear-minded were you and I tend to find that I answer in a very similar pattern through all the questions right? So if I’m very happy that day, then I also say that I am very clear minded, that I am very uh smart and that I was not very anxious and um like all the items tend to be very well correlated and I think about this as I’m filling it out and it feels very genuine in the moment right? Um so I think that happiness is sort of a- a confusing construct for me um it’s sort of um a tough thing to measure um because it is so highly correlated with so many other feelings and-and dreams um and motives and whatever
07:46- There’s been times where I’ve been whether it’s sitting on the porch at my house on Forest Court or I’m out with my friends or you know it’s like we’re at the start of a football game you know all these experiences and I’ve just taken time for a second to see myself in the moment and understand you know wow like I’m alive like I am having a great time in this moment, this is exactly where I’m supposed to be
08:13- I think for the most part, I notice when I’m not happy, when I’m sad or when I’m angry or upset um and whenever those feelings arise, I know that I’ve sort of come out of my general state of happiness of calm. So for me it’s less about noticing happiness and more about noticing something covering it up and when I’m extremely joyful I would even say that’s even covering up my happiness. Generally when I’m joyful I’m like- I never want this to end- and that feeling of never wanting something to end, while really good in the moment, can sometimes lead to feelings of sadness or regret after the fact. So what I really strive for is those times where I’m just at complete peace and calm with the world as it is.
09:05- I don’t measure my happiness. I think- I mean you know it’s a personal thing, it’s-it’s not like you can say this about everybody but I feel like I’m fundamentally always happy you know it’s like my baseline. I’m not- I rarely get mad, I rarely get unhappy. I do get unhappy sometimes and it happens once a month I think. I can be stressed, I can be worn down, I can work really hard or be worked really hard from exterior things but I will still be happy cause in essence what I do now is what I like to do. If I was miserable doing what I did I wouldn’t be doing it. That’s- that’s how I’d work
09:48- Yeah so I can like physically measure that by how tight my back feels um I’m a very stressed out person at times and so I can physically measure my happiness from how tight my back is but other than that I think there’s times that I feel myself like in the moment and appreciating what’s happening and so I think I don’t know if that’s a way of measuring it but I think there’s like certain feelings that you get when you’re truly happy and I think that’s like a really good way of measuring it- when you don’t have anything else in the world and you’re there and you’re present with the ones that you love and you’re happy.
10:23- Well I um I tried some of the mindfulness exercises from like some classes- from here and from uh back home. Like trying to monitor throughout the day when you’re happy and when you’re not and um I don’t know I try to keep on a record from the days as well- whether it’s a happy day or a sad day or depressed um I don’t really know how I measure it in the moment it’s just it’s just a good feeling I guess, I don’t know… it’s difficult
10:59- Measuring happiness I think is a very difficult construct to even-to even think about. I would say that all lives go through periods of happiness, extreme happiness, elation as well as deep dark unhappiness. I think that things happen to us in life that we have to be resilient to get over and those things that are bad help us appreciate and have gratitude for things that are the other direction. So I would say that if I were to categorize when I feel happy- which is most of the time- I might compare it to those times when things aren’t going as well.
11:44- I- I wanna start off with a quote but that’s like the cheesiest thing ever like- they say- they say comparison is the thief of happiness, they should really say it’s social comparison [chuckles] um… to me social comparison uh is not good for my happiness um obviously just being in competitive environments going in for competitive positions, always measuring myself to others whether it’s professionally or even socially, whether it’s in classes and so on um social comparison is something that detracts from my happiness uh that said that is not the case for people I’m really close to like my girlfriend, or my good friends, or my roommates- so even if they have a job that pays more- which they do, in fact, a lot of them, even if they have- get a better grade in class, even if they get something that I didn’t, I allow myself to be happy for them more so than I am disappointed that I wasn’t the one getting that.
12:46- I do look to my peers cause I think it’s important to see like hey maybe like I’m too serious sometimes, like maybe I’m studying too much, maybe I’m too focused on the professional aspects of my life, and like sometimes it’s good to look at your roommates and your friends who are just as smart, just as hardworking, but they’re also kind of getting the right balance of also having fun and just being generally happy and doing what makes them happy.
13:10- Like when I compare something that like I want to improve about myself in relation to someone else I’m like of course it’s different, like our lives our different, our experiences are different, like they didn’t go through what I went through, I didn’t go what they went through so like it makes sense that I’m not as happy as them in that way or something like that
13:28- I mean the reason I do research on it is because it is totally relevant to me um so when for instance my partner and I got together. I thought that I was fairly happy, I thought that I was doing well socially I mean I had one really good friend from highschool and one close friend in college and I was really good with that. But Ke’Aun, he had a group of really close friends all through college and it wasn’t until I saw that that I wanted it and that I realized that I was dissatisfied with my social life, that I um found myself sort of just like unhappy overall. And I don’t know that I ever completely recovered from those feelings, that feeling that um I was missing out on this great experience, that I wasn’t- yeah maybe I was happy in the moment but I had been deluding myself and there was this much better more supreme happiness that I was missing out on um that-that Ke’Aun sort of introduced me to. So I think that one way that social comparison makes us unhappy is by showing us what other options there are out there
14:37- Social comparison is very easily occurring in almost everyone and it’s very unconscious you know, with the proliferation of social media and you know, I probably use, I think it’s like 7 hours of screen time a week or some insane number just for social media sites. This constant stream of content ,you know, that your friends are going out or traveling or have significant others or just are living parts of life that you aren’t currently living. I feel like it’s very easy to get trapped underneath all oh why am I not doing that and constantly asking yourself that question- I know I’ve done it a lot too it just isn’t really healthy. I think it’s way too easy nowadays where I find myself other people who live in other countries or are going to different jobs to compare myself to them just because it’s so easy. But at the same time you have to reel it in and say kind of self reflect and say listen I have these friends, and I have this job, and I’m studying something that I’m really passionate about and that I really love and at the end of the day, that’s what matters.
15:47- When I compare myself to friends it might be different than when I compare myself to other ones who are not that fortunate to go to the University of Michigan for example, or are not even considered to be a part of an exchange program, then you can also compare yourself to people in other countries, or maybe within poorer countries where hygiene may be an issue or where children can’t go to school or don’t have enough medicine to be treated so when I compare myself to these people I do not feel happy to be in my position, I also feel more fortunate and I value my own happiness more when I compare myself to others.
16:24- the sign that I saw during my half marathon, it was like “Your Race, Your Pace” and so for me, I- that was like my moment of almost clarity like I was freaking out about my time, if I was going to be able to do it and I was sick and I was like that just means I’m just doing this for me and I’m going to feel so good at the end- and I do, I feel so good about how it went. I didn’t hit my goal and I was sick and I still had a good time, I was happy with it, and it was an experience and I’ll go back and do it again. So I feel like it does affect you but I think if you consciously remember to let it go, then you’ll be happier in life
16:58- I like it when they say you have to compare yourself from who you were yesterday, not someone else today. So I think that the social comparison is a very bad thing to do and you shouldn’t do it- I think it leads to a lot of unhappiness.
17:15- I don’t know that it has a lot of positive effects, um like you would think that making a lot of downward comparisons and thinking about people who have fewer friends or people who have less money or worse degrees would make me feel good but I’m not-I’m not certain that it does. Um because I think that I’m very good at explaining away downward comparisons. I’m very good at thinking about why people who are worse off than me did not have the opportunities that I had to get to where I am right? Um why you know my friends from highschool who are still in my hometown weren’t able to leave because they’re families really needed them to stay there right? Um and so it doesn’t really feel like a downward comparison to say that I was able to leave this town that none of us really liked, I was able to leave and they weren’t. Like, I left and they didn’t. It’s-it’s not so much a comparison as much of like just like a fact right? Um yeah I think I’m very good at undermining downward comparison and not very good at undermining upward comparisons so just comparison in general makes me less happy.
18:21- Oh my god, how do you notice if something shapes you?
18:25- I think what shaped my view on happiness the most is how people express it, so um so I grew up in a Chinese household but immersed in a Czech culture, and I’d say that both my Chinese and my Czech heritage kind of, like people in those two cultures don’t really show their happiness outward. They may like think of themselves as being happy and like satisfied with what they have but like you may not necessarily be able to tell that by looking or even interacting with them. It’s like very much a measure of self and like something you just hold close to heart whereas um moving to the states to college, I definitely noticed that way more in the people around me, like people being more- more individualistic and just expressing themselves way more
19:12- I think when I was younger, my parents definitely like stressed the importance of like having a good job like earning like you know a good amount of money so you could support yourself. So I definitely tied a lot of my belief of what happiness would be in terms of getting a good job, finding that opportunity, and once I did that I’d be happier, I’d be less stressed and I’ve realized that it’s not- I mean it’s great, it definitely makes your life better and easier, but I think happiness also just comes from finding people that care about you and that wanna spend time with you, and like finding out what you enjoy.
19:46- One event which shaped my view of happiness is when my mom found out that she had cancer so then we were like more happy when she was just doing well and not if- I don’t know we just had good grades in school for example then we would be normally happy but if you know that there’s another problem you can’t really solve which makes you unhappy and them suddenly it’s not a problem anymore and you solved that it’s out of your mind then you feel even more happier. Sometimes you have to go through a really bad time to know how happy you really are. So I believe that event has really shaped my view on happiness
20:20- My family and the cultural background there um you know my parents were immigrants from Lebanon um and there’s just a lot of emotion involved in that and um like my parents like the bulk of their childhood was lived during wars and civil wars and so I always just kind of I always grew up just thinking about I guess worst case scenarios um and then also just admiring like the resilience of humans um and the ability to like find good in the bad. Um I’d say the cultural family aspect is pretty big especially because of that and then I’ve personally gone through some like traumas that like also put things in perspective
21:35- Danish people are good at focusing on like the small but positive things in life. For example, with our concept of hygge, um because it’s like- it’s a culturally constructed concept- like when you say something is “hygge”, then you positive- then you focus on the positive things. It could be anything from like a nice evening together with your friends it can just be sitting on a rainy day underneath your duvet with a cup of coffee- that can also be hygge. Um so it’s like trying to get the best out of a situation
22:20- I am like Albanian and like Italian and I have like a European background and in like an Albanian culture it’s very family-centered um and like I have a lot of family in Italy so like when I go to visit there it’s obviously very family-centered dinners and everything so like that is a very important thing to me as far as my own happiness, just being close with my family um being able to like have fun with them, dinners, um, and having them like involved in my life so um like for like different like thanksgiving or like new years dinners like we’d always like put on Albanian music and like dance around and like it’d always be like a really fun time and that’s like obviously something that like makes me really happy- just being with everybody.
23:01- So I was raised Hindu so my religion has had a really large impact on um my perspective of towards both the values and morals I have and on how um I interpret my life’s experiences so one of the ways that that has really impacted it is that the definition of happiness in Vedanta is very different from how we look at it from a Western perspective. So that had a huge impact on how I looked at it. Additionally, I attended a course on Hindu philosophy and while I was at that course, I had a number of experiences um that led me to understand happiness as being much closer to my true self or as being um as being sort of this state of being in complete alignment with my true self so viewing it that way was sort of um the product of all of these uh sort of catalysts in my past that helped me see it that way which is why I now consider myself to be one of the happiest people I know.
24:15- I think my upbringing has made me content with living on a lot of the bare minimums um and uh and and it’s also- so the other thing that maybe makes me different that people who also come from working class or poor backgrounds is that I lived in a town where you could very much be happy while poor and this is not part of the dominant narrative or academia in general, we tend to think that poverty is this very miserable state and everyone is just constantly struggling to get out of it and um I don’t know if that really maps onto my experience, I think for me it was more, we were much more cooperative, much more collaborative um we all shared clothes with each other in the community and in my family in particular. We all like lent each other money all the time, we got rides to work and to school from people down the street um the-the friend who drove me to school every day I don’t even talk to anymore. He wasn’t like a very close friend but that was just sort of like what you did in-in my community um and I think because of that, because you could like get a house for super cheap because you know the guy who owned it, you could do a lot with 0 dollars um so so yeah to some extent I think my upbringing has changed my perspective on happiness’ relationship to money or money’s relationship to happiness.
25:52- Um really happy moment which comes to mind when I think about happiness was when I was accepted into the Morgan Stanley Spring Insight in London uh it was the first time I applied for a top tier firm internship or position and I was really excited. I had several interviews and I just didn’t know if I was good enough, what the competition would be like, cause people from all over Europe applied to the position in London, and then when the person from the HR, from HR called me and offered me the place, I didn’t know what to do, I was between laughing and crying and trying to stay professional. I was totally overwhelmed by my feelings but I just know at that moment I was- I was really happy, that was just the right word to describe it. After that I immediately called my dad who was waiting for a response as badly as I was and just sharing that moment with him was really special to me and knowing people value and want you to be part of the team or part of their firm um and that you can make it in such good firms was a really happy moment for me.
26:55- So um my 20th birthday, um my parents came down from New Jersey to surprise me and then that day we were actually in the Final Four for basketball. We won the game, so that was amazing right? We didn’t win the championship unfortunately, but that day like all my friends were there like roommates, my friends from like school, my friends from like outside of school you know who I’ve just got to know through other means like. Everyone I cared about was in that room like celebrating that game but also like celebrating my birthday with me. And like I think like when I look back on like those memories, like everyone I cared about was there um and I think that- that was one of the moments when I realized- I didn’t actually realize in that moment, I think looking back on it a little too late, I realized that’s what happiness was. It wasn’t getting a good job, it wasn’t you know getting- I don’t know- something else- a gift right? It was literally having those people who care about you there, and all of them honestly, that was amazing, I have like some stuff like from like that party still in my room just to remind me of that day just to like amazing.
28:13- My freshman year, uh first semester it was like that one really big snow that happened first semester, it was coming up on finals or something. You know how first semester freshman year, you’re still not totally super close friends with anyone but like you’re tryna… so uh me and my friends- we’re actually still really close now- we decided to go on like a midnight walk through the Arb, we were just like walking and then we went on the little path that like takes you to like next to the train tracks um and me and my two friends we like walked up to the bank that was right next to the train tracks, and me and my one friend stood on the train tracks and we were just like chillin’ and then like suddenly the train tracks started moving and we were like-woah and then so like me and my friend jumped off and we were gonna run away but then our third one was like nonono like come back up and like we went back up and um we just like we laid there in the snow like right next to the train tracks and when the train went by it was just like so fast and so loud and there were lights and the snow was swirling in the air and we were all laughing and it just like felt like magical um it was like I knew that I was laughing not because I could hear myself and not because my brain told my body to laugh, but because like I could feel it in the back of my throat and that was a really cool feeling.
29:37- I was on vacation with my husband and we spent an afternoon lying on the sand on the beach in Florida um just watching the clouds go by and I think that we were both totally in sync with everything as it was. There were just no thoughts, no feelings other than being completely in the moment, and I think whenever I truly am present I’m at my happiest.
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30:06- I must’ve been… 9 or 10 years old. A very particular situation- so I was a professional Pokemon card player even at a very young age um and this was a special event, it was a regional tournament, my dad of course drove me out because I couldn’t drive at the time um and amongst this field of 100 or 200 people I actually got to the top 8 and I was competing against theoretically the 8 best players there at the time, and that was very exciting. My grandmother happened to be there at the time so she could celebrate for me without really understanding very much of what was going on just because she wasn’t a Pokemon player herself unfortunately. Uh but I just remember feeling a total sense of satisfaction, of pride, and of real achievement because I was- I ended up finishing 5th overall but I mean I won a ton of cards for just being in the top 8 especially at such a young age it felt even-even better than all the other people because I was so young so that was really exciting to me.
31:05- So when I was in college, I-I had this working theory all throughout college and it was this idea that what-what makes us happiest is the resolution of tension um that when things are going really poorly, it’s the end of that and seeing the other side um that makes us supremely happy um and uh that was really put to the test on my college graduation day um because my-my mom had been struggling with some mental health issues at the time and she had actually been hospitalized for a little while, and she was hospitalized just days before my college graduation and it didn’t look like she was going to make it and um so I had spent a lot of the days leading up to my college graduation calling hospitals and the police and talking to her and counseling her and really not spending any time with any of my friends or celebrating the end of college and um what ended up happening is that I called one of my friends from high school who I hadn’t spoken to in years and I was like hey like do you think you could stop by the hospital and pick up my mom and drive her to Maryland today because my graduation is this afternoon and um and I was very lucky that she said yes so sure enough um I convinced the doctors to let my mom leave and I had my friend come and pick my mom up and she drove over all the way to Maryland literally the day of my graduation, I did not see her until I got up on stage and I saw her out in the audience and she just had tears streaming down her eyes and it was like ugh the happiest day of my life and she gave me a huge kiss when I got off stage and uh that picture was my Facebook profile picture for the longest time um and it’s-I think it’s still very prominent on my page because like college graduation is happy-sure, um but I think what made it extremely happy was that um someone that had been such a big part of my journey was able to be there especially right after it didn’t seem like she was going to be able to be there.
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33:06- There’s one memory where we went on a trip, me and my friends, we’re a friend group of 14 people, eh and we went to Norway and one of my friend’s sort of vacation or holiday home or house and we were there for 4 days out in nowhere, it was just up in the mountains and there wasn’t really anything to do besides being together and just having fun um and we walked a lot of long walks, played games, cooked together, sat by the first together, overall just having a hygge time so I think there I think just because we were so far away and we were completely disconnected from the um our lives at home, we were just all able to be there um and there wasn’t any WiFi either so we were just there together without any-any things that could disturb us. So I think that was just a very peaceful situation where I really had time to-to feel or to be aware as well- be aware of that I was-the feeling inside of me that I was feeling really happy.
\34:41- Story time. Uh growing up, I had like a really bad speech impediment, um I had this thing that like speech therapists- they call it like a tongue thrust, see I did it right there, um it’s basically when you said like the phonemes like s, r, or th, your tongue will like blugh and it was cute as a child, for sure, you know, you talk around and then growing up through middle school, I was kind of made fun of for it um I did speech therapy like 4 times a night-4 times a week, uh and I really did everything I could and I was trying so so hard to just kind of get rid of it because I felt like when I was speaking, people weren’t hearing my voice, they were kind of just hearing my speech impediment and that was really tough in a developmental stage in my life when you’re trying to find your voice, you’re trying to find your identity and you don’t actually feel like you’re being heard. So enter speech and debate that I did um in 8th grade actually was my first tournament ever and my literature teacher said here we’re going to give you this forensics piece, it was um Elie Wiesel’s Nobel-Nobel prize winning speech in 1999 I believe, uh called the Perils of Indifference, and she was like “You’re going to memorize this 5 minute speech, and you’re going to go to this tournament in North New Jersey, and you’re just going to speak it.” And I looked at her and I was like- you have to be kidding me, like there’s no way that I am going to be able to first- memorize this, and which has all this verbiage and vocabulary and words that are way beyond my understanding, but nevertheless, get up in front of a group of people and well speak and then be judged on how I spoke. But she was like nonono, nono just-just do it, trust me. And I was like, okay, like I guess I’ll do it and I kind of took a big gulp and I was like- let’s do it! And so every night instead of doing speech therapy, I just studied this script, and I worked on it, and I worked on it, and I worked on it, until the final, you know, competition came. And we drove up, my coach and I, and she said okay, you’re gonna do 3 separate rounds, and you’re going to be judged between 1 to 6. 1 being the best in the room, 6 being the worst in the room. And in my mind I was like like okay I’m gonna go straight 6-6-6, I’ll maybe get a 5 if I’m lucky. And I was so nervous, I was sweating profusely, I’m in this like ill-fitted suit and I go through round 1 and I’m like okay, I feel like people were like listening to me, you know people were like nodding their heads, like I got good feedback after the round and I was like kind of confused, but I was like okay we’ll do it! Same feeling with round 2, same feeling with round 3. They announce that there are 6 finalists over the microphone in the auditorium, and I’m like, it’s no way it’s me, no way. And they say, you know, Girl number 1, Girl number 2, Boy number 1, Boy number 3, Girl number 3, and James Dolan. And I’m like oh, crap, like oh no, I’m going to have to do this- I’m going to have to speak in front of like 200 people, my tongue is going to like come out of my mouth every time I say like an s an r or a th, I’m screwed basically and they call my name, I’m the last speaker, and I get up and see all these coaches um and my coach kind of smiling, knew that inside she had done something right for me and I get up and I start speaking and it’s just like butter like all of the nights of speech therapy, all the insecurities I had about people not hearing me, it all just kind of like faded away and I gave this speech for 5 minutes almost perfectly in my opinion and it’s one of the earliest memories of my life that is just so vivid. Like I remember what I was wearing, what everyone was wearing around me- needless to say I ended up actually winning the tournament- I went 1-1-1 in that final round and it was finally, you know, standing up there, receiving that medal, knowing that all of your hard work had been done and accomplished, and receiving a trophy and know that you have worked so hard to kind of do something about yourself and not fix yourself per se but make yourself a better person that was really truly the first time in my life I was ever really happy.
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39:00- One of the things that currently make me incredibly happy because I am close to retirement age and I’ve had 44 years of work uh the fact that I can make a difference in the life of a child in their college years is critically important to me and I know that if I can help one student once a week that I have uh tremendous meaning in my life and when one of my former students calls or emails which they do all the time- I love to hear from them and hear how they’re doing because they are my legacy.
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39:42- [upbeat music]
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40:29- I just like- I kind of feel like I’m on the office so I wanna do like some office bits or something heh heh
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40:34- [upbeat music]