The Memoir
What Makes us Happy? (full article)
Joshua Wolf Shenk
"Last fall, I spent about a month in the file room of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, hoping to learn the secrets of the good life. The project is one of the longest-running—and probably the most exhaustive—longitudinal studies of mental and physical well-being in history. Begun in 1937 as a study of healthy, well-adjusted Harvard sophomores (all male), it has followed its subjects for more than 70 years.
From their days of bull sessions in Cambridge to their active duty in World War II, through marriages and divorces, professional advancement and collapse—and now well into retirement—the men have submitted to regular medical exams, taken psychological tests, returned questionnaires, and sat for interviews. The files holding the data are as thick as unabridged dictionaries. They sit in a wall of locked cabinets in an office suite behind Fenway Park in Boston, in a plain room with beige carpeting and fluorescent lights that is littered with the detritus of many decades of social-scientific inquiry: a pile of enormous spreadsheet data books; a 1970s-era typewriter; a Macintosh PowerBook, circa 1993. All that’s missing are the IBM punch cards used to analyze the data in the early days." (Shenk)
The surface culture component of the Iceberg View of Culture addressed in this memoir is:
The surface culture component is studies
The deep culture component(s) of the Iceberg View of Culture addressed in this memoir is:
The deep culture component of the Iceberg View of CUlture addressed in this memoir is the key to happiness and self revelation
This is because:
The person is going to these different file rooms and what not to find the "secrets of the good life" and is trying to find out what it takes to be truly happy
The turning point of this memoir is when: He cannot find the punch cards that were used to analyze the data
The author shows he/she has changed after this turning point by:
Talking about how he has changed his view on how happiness is earned/received.
A paragraph that demonstrates what I like about this writer’s style is:
"From their days of bull sessions in Cambridge to their active duty in World War II, through marriages and divorces, professional advancement and collapse—and now well into retirement—the men have submitted to regular medical exams, taken psychological tests, returned questionnaires, and sat for interviews. The files holding the data are as thick as unabridged dictionaries. They sit in a wall of locked cabinets in an office suite behind Fenway Park in Boston, in a plain room with beige carpeting and fluorescent lights that is littered with the detritus of many decades of social-scientific inquiry: a pile of enormous spreadsheet data books; a 1970s-era typewriter; a Macintosh PowerBook, circa 1993. All that’s missing are the IBM punch cards used to analyze the data in the early days." (Shenk)
The devices (imagery, figurative language, dialogue, recipes, etc.) the writer uses to create meaning in this excerpt is:
Memoir Topic Approval:
Topic: Every Sunday night my family orders Larosa's pizza and sits together and we'll watch tv together, and we will also just talk and enjoy each others company. During football season, we will put on football because of the Sunday night football that is always on. We started doing pizza on Sunday nights because of the football and then it became tradition to do it every Sunday. When my sister went off to college, we stopped doing our Sunday night pizza as frequently and wouldn't eat together as a family as much. When she came back for Christmas break on that Sunday we ordered pizza and spent quality time together and I realized how important those Sunday nights were for me. It wasn't just about the food, but the quality time I got to spend with my family. When my sister went back to OSU after the break I made sure to keep up with the tradition while she was gone.
The surface culture component: The main component in my story is food. It shows how simply ordering pizza and sitting with your family can bring you closer together, it doesn't have to be some extravagant meal. Another surface culture component is tradition. The fact that we did this every Sunday made it special to our family and something we valued a lot. If we replaced the pizza with any other meal it would not feel the same.
The deep culture component I find in my memoir is nonverbal communication, how we can just sit there and enjoy each other's presence and we don't necessarily have to say anything at all. This is because: These Sunday night dinners would not be the same without the food (pizza) being able to bring us together.
Turning point of my story is when: My sister comes home from college and I realize how important the Sunday night pizza was.
I will show how I changed after this turning point by: showing my emotions within the memoir
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