Cooking is a very intimate activity and you can get to know a lot of a person through cooking together. Talking about funny things that happened over the weekend while mixing ingredients to flirting with other groups when we were supposed to do dishes. My favorite part of the class though was the cooking part, all of the controlled chaos that would happen in a kitchen was something I grew to appreciate. After making the focaccia and letting it rise, baking it was a really interesting part as well. During this time it would bake, me and my group would do the dishes then relax after. Watching the bread rise was so fascinating to me, it would slowly change from a white soft dough to a tall, tan and brown crispy loaf in a matter of minutes. It was like you watched it grow up from the time you were just mixing to finally tasting it.

Whenever we were baking something we always had to open the oven up while it was cooking to check whatever we were cooking and forget one thing. Baking most breads means that your oven has to be at around 350 degrees for it to cook and so every time I opened it I was greeted with a very hot gust of air that made my eyes instantly dry. It felt like when you were a kid on a hot summer day leaving the house and being hit with the hottest rays from the sun. Well it turns out checking on the bread was good because it was done. The crispyedges looked like a wall surrounding the soft interior of the bread guarding it from the heat of the oven. It had little pockets of oil that had not been absorbed by the bread which made my mouth water even more as anticipation grew over the time it took to let it cool down.

After preparing it, the time had come to finally eat it. Its first bite was so good and what made it even better was that it was a cold morning so having warm and tasty food to cover my palette on an empty stomach made the experience phenomenal. It was so good that I had to share it with my friends and the surprise was that they lovedit too. That’s what I love about food, it brings people together and can also bring back memories. That’s what I hope remaking this dish would be like, remaking new memories while remembering the ones that helped me get to where I am today. Focaccia to me isn’t just another Italian dish,it’s nostalgia, my new friends, my wonderful cooking teacher, it’s all of the laughs we had and all of the great memories that were made.

Like all good things they have to have purposes, and with focaccia it didn’t just become one of the most popular breads overnight. There is a simple yet intriguing history behind it that makes it one of the most popular breads in the world. What’s interesting is that focaccia actually evolved into what modern day pizza is. Gabriel Zuchtriegel recently discovered a drawing on a cave from 2,000 years ago depicting what looks to be an early form of pizza. It was later discovered that it was actually focaccia because the ingredients for pizza were not yet brought over during that time. The drawing was found in Pompeii and focaccia was considered a, “frugal meal served in a luxurious setting”. What’s crazy is that a simple dish that originated all the way in Europe is what the majority of the American population have tried, it’s in school lunches all the way to the fanciest restaurants in the world. It has truly revolutionized the way we view food and consume it. To add onto this a similar article written by Elisabetta Povoledo says that focaccia isn’t just an Italian dish because, “pointed out that there is nothing simpler than mixing water with flour and then baking it. The practice was typical of many ancient cultures. The word focaccia originally comes from the Latin for “hearth.” Therefore focaccia originated just as a regular loaf of bread but what makes focaccia different from other breads is the amount of yeast they put in it to make it rise more.

Focaccia has stood the test of time for many years mainly due to the influence of Italian cuisine on America. When people think of American food they think of cheeseburgers and pizza, but what they actually are is just food that came from other countries. The impact of Italian cuisine on America is huge and that’s the reason their food is still so prevalent today, the food is simple yet delicious.

Considering it being my first time making bread I’d say I did pretty well. Mixing all of the ingredients was my favorite part because it was so satisfying. Seeing all of the spices slowly combine with the flour like a chemical reaction was so relaxing. Then kneading the dough made the whole experience even better. Each of my fingers individually pressing into the soft sticky dough was something that I wouldn’t mind doing as a job. I kneaded the dough for a solid 5 minutes before it was done and let it rise. However, the worst part about cooking any dish is doing the dishes after so that’s what I did. Whenever I had to do the dishes in my cooking class I hated it, being left out of the cool conversations to be left to wash dirty dishes in a clogged sink was not a fun time.

After kneading the dough I put it into a kind of small baking dish which was my first mistake. I let it rise for a couple hours and came back to a risen dough that was almost spilling out of the dish. It was too small but my ignorant self didn’t care so I kept it there.

However, it just so happened to be Thanksgiving and it was currently 6 o’clock so I knew I wouldn’t be home to cook the bread. Time management was and will always be my enemy, and this situation proved that. I didn’t calculate the time it would take to let the dough rise to when we would have Thanksgiving so I didn’t know if I would be baking it that day. When I came back it was more than ready to be baked but it was 12 o’clock so I was left with a choice. To bake it that day and eat it the next day or just bake it the following day. My thought process going through this was if I baked it today I would have to eat it cold and I didn’t want to do that but if I baked it the next day I could run the risk of having the dough dry up which is not good. After a long two minutes and thirty five seconds I decided to bake it the following day and to try my best to not make it dry up I drizzled olive oil on it. When I woke up the first thing I did was immediately check on it and to my surprise most of it was still moist but there were a couple dry spots that I could do nothing about. When I opened the preheated oven I was greeted with a hot gust of air that reminded me of when I baked in my cooking class. Watching it slowly go from this soft gooey material to this beautiful golden bread made all of the effort worth it. Taking my first bite was amazing even though it didn’t taste exactly like the one I made in high school it still brought satisfaction. Its crazy how food can bring back these memories, from just the taste of something to bringing you back to the old days, this was nostalgia.

Being happy is a gift, it may just be chemicals firing in our brain but there’s so much more to it. In the documentary “HAPPY” shot in 2011 by producer Roko Belic, they explore the idea of what being happy actually is and why some people are happier than others. Being happy is something we all strive for and is even written in the constitution, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness” but, a vast majority of the U.S population is unhappy which is interesting because while we are one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet one of the unhappiest. According to researchers about 50% of what determines our happiness setpoint is our genetics, 10% is our environment and 40% is what we actively do to make us happy. This says a lot because most people think if they’re sad it’s because of their genetics and can’t do anything about it, but in reality we can control our happiness more than we think.

Our main findings were that the majority of the class found that the class was happier which shows that the methods we did in class increased our happiness. In addition, individually I also found that after 3 weeks my happiness did increase as well.

Background

The idea of sitting down and just breathing seems like a very odd activity. It is shown in movies and when we hear it we think of a dude sitting down with his legs crossed saying, “Omm”. What I’m talking about is meditation and studies have shown that it can actually improve a person’s happiness. According to professor Richard J. Davidson people who meditate can increase their happiness by a lot with meditation and shows that people may be able to control their own happiness. “People who do meditation can increase their happiness levels for long and extended periods of time even in people taking antidepressants,” says Richard J. Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin.

This idea spoke to me because I don’t meditate but I pray, so I can totally see why meditation works and want to learn more of how it correlates to the brain. I can relate this to our happiness experiment by practicing more meditation and prayer into my daily routine to see if it can increase my happiness because it’s not that hard to implement them into your life.

METHODOLOGY

In class and through the study we looked at many different methods to help one increase their own happiness, maybe through physical activity or through certain breathing techniques. However, the topic that touched me the most was compassion and for a couple reasons. I believe that showing compassion and kindness is one of the best ways to increase your happiness because when you help someone you can feel a deep sense of accomplishment for doing something that may seem insignificant but the impact is great.

Ed Diener a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois speaks on the topic of how compassion relates to happiness and says, “Gratitude, compassion and love are all spiritual emotions and if you only seek your own happiness it could be kind of a selfish thing but once you move to the spiritual emotions and worry about the well being of the world your life grows. You care about something bigger than yourself”. To sum it up, Ed Diener is saying that while there is a physical aspect to improving one’s happiness, the act of showing compassion and being selfless is the spiritual aspect that can both make you happier but also help the world. This is important because it points out that happiness is both a physical and emotional experience.

The physical aspect such as exercising brings happiness because of the feeling of accomplishment you feel after a good workout and the rush of dopamine you get while doing an activity. The emotional aspect of increasing your happiness comes from giving to others or helping others . Relating to this, it helps me understand how I can better achieve my own happiness through helping others because I get great joy when I know that I’ve helped someone. For example, either helping a friend with homework and especially while working out because not only am I helping a friend gain more confidence in their body, but also helping them physically.

In addition, what helped me understand more about what it means to be happy was the in class meditation we did. Being in college has helped me realize that my life is only gonna get busier, so taking only 10 minutes out of your day to just stop all of the craziness going on in your life to just breathe and appreciate not only the world around you but the people as well. To piggyback off that idea, when compared to my methods such as physical activity and compassion, meditating can help me with those as well. My favorite activity however was the charades game we played. This activity was the thing that brought me the most happiness out of all of the things we did in class because it not only made us interact with our classmates which we don’t do a lot ,but also playing a game that brings us back to our childhood to make us feel excited again.

Class Results

During this 3 week period, our class did an experiment to see if we could increase our happiness by doing strategies that could potentially make us happier. What we found asa class is that we did see an increase in overall happiness by the majority. This is interesting because this data shows that we could actually control our own happiness to a certain extent which means that happiness is irrational. It can fluctuate and according to our data, can be pushed into a certain direction by will. For example, when we did the compassion assignment in class I felt like that was a different approach at increasing our happiness but I did however feel that it made me happier.

The assignment was that we had to write things we were passionate about and explain them to another person. Through this, I could see how this can make someone happier because when we talk about things we’re passionate about it sparks our interest and makes us want the other person to experience the passion we feel. Through these class strategies I experienced an overall increase in happiness when we did them not only because it meant that we didn’t have to do work, but because it was something new.

Individual Results

While we studied happiness over this 3 week period I found that personally my happiness increased significantly. Over this time I did physical activity with a mix of hanging out with friends and found that these were the strategies I could do to increase my happiness the most. The main things I did were working out, playing basketball, listening to music and hanging out with friends. During this experiment I found that I had to constantly be busy, to keep happy because when I wasn’t I was either at a neutral state or felt sad.

However, as I slowly kept myself more busy I found that my happiness consistently increased over time and plan on keeping these strategies in my routine. Due to my happiness increase I was able to get more work done because I was more enthusiastic about facing adversity which made doing homework fun. To sum it up, this experiment impacted me in a way that I will use this knowledge for the rest of my life because it has a purpose and can impact the way I live.

~ Me doing Part 1 writing all of my assignments on the master calendar

The author, “Cal Newport”, a former straight A student, explores the techniques and strategies used by many top ranking undergraduate students from many of the top universities in the book, “How to become a straight A student”. The purpose of the book is to help college students get straight A’s through being efficient with your work and time, but also making sure you don’t get burnt out. My opinion of the book is that the advice and strategies it gave me were more than useful and what I love is that I can incorporate these strategies at my own pace, the author doesn’t tell the reader that you have to do a million steps every day in order to get straight A’s but instead add small changes throughout your day.

In Part 1 titled, “Study Basics”, Cal Newport explains the idea of organizing your day in the morning and having a master calendar so that you can see when all of your assignments are due. At first when I started this specific method I was enthusiastic and still am, but do see some things that I would do differently. Cal Newport says, “like a sheet of paper ripped out of a notebook each morning” (35) and refers to waking up every morning and writing down things to do that day so that I won’t forget anything. However, for me in my personal experience I found it to be quite a hassle because in my day there are so many things that go on, so for me to write the things I should and shouldn’t do brings just a little more stress to me everyday. What I would do instead is do it the night before so that I don’t have to worry about doing it in the morning, but I would also just have more time. However, I found that writing down all of my assignments on one master calendar was helpful because I am a very forgetful person so for me to know when everything is due was very useful for me.

For most students at any education level I believe that they can benefit from the techniques used in the Part 1 “Study Basics” of this book. His strategies to become a straight A student are doable and teaches one how to organize their time efficiently, rather than cramming all of your study time into one long session. Newport describes the secret as not using “brute force” when studying because it is “inefficient” and is “mentally draining, which further diminishes the rate, which further diminishes the rate at which you can absorb and internalize information”(13). However, the information in Part 1 can’t always be applicable to 100% of the people that read them, so for some people they may keep one or two ideas and change the rest completely but that’s great about learning new strategies is that you don’t have to follow them 1:1. You can change them to your liking because who’s gonna say you can’t.

To sum it all up I do believe that the information given in Part 1 is useful for most college students because if applied with intention to use, it can teach them skills that they will use for the rest of their lives, not only college. It teaches them to effectively manage their time while getting in both important minutes of learning and enough time to relax.

Similar to Part 1, Part 2 “Quizzes and Exams”, keeps the same principles such as working efficiently and effectively to maintain straight A’s. A part of the book I personally related to was when they explain that having a healthy lifestyle is just as important as studying itself. I’m a firm believer that living a healthy lifestyle can help you with your grades, this is because through fitness you learn discipline and it can translate over to staying focused in your classes. Not only fitness but it also explains just getting “7–9 hours of sleep” (145) can be so beneficial for studying efficiently, through my personal experience it’s so much better to have short little study sessions throughout the day rather than just cramming it all in one night and not having enough energy the next day to perform well on the test.

~ My Notes for a Non-Technical class

A great section in part 2 is when they explain how something as simple as not taking can impact your grades. They explain how non-technical not taking is good for classes that don’t require a lot of equations but focus more on ideas and concepts such as english or psychology. It works by recording the big ideas and answering important questions that the teacher went over because when going back to study the material it will be easy to identify what was went over that day. For technical classes the note taking works by recording each step that is needed to complete a problem and label them such as having a arrow pointing to where “Step 1” and “Step 2” took place. Its also helpful to write as many sample problems because steps to an equation aren’t enough to fully understand how to do certain problems.

Another topic that came up that I related to was “Setting long term goals”, this concept stuck with me because it talked about staying motivated and I feel that staying motivated is important in doing work because if you aren’t working towards anything I feel like it makes you have no purpose, almost as if you are just in school because you’re forced to be there. To compare and contrast Part 1 and Part 2, I feel that part 1 just explains the fundamentals of changing one’s study habits to help them improve their grades. It’s a simple yet effective blueprint to organizing one’s day and showing them that it doesn’t take a complicated approach to getting straight A’s in college.

Part 2 just gets a little more specific into helping one get straight A’s such as tips and tricks to stay motivated. It focuses on the small aspects that can hinder you from achieving academic success and teaches you how to overcome them which is why I find this part to be the most interesting because it isn’t as broad as part 1. One pro of this book is that it gives a good overall plan of attack to help one get straight A’s. It covers many aspects of studying and organizing your day which I like because they are all applicable to a college student’s day.

To sum it all up I would say that this book as a whole was pretty useful in helping one achieve straight A’s through different strategies and techniques. Like all book reviews they are subjective and can only be truly reviewed by the person reading them so there might be some things that the book says that might not be for some people. I recently started actually incorporating these strategies into my life little by little here and there because my grades kind of dropped because I wasn’t really taking my classes seriously so I wanted to try to lock in and what better time to incorporate the strategies I read. I realized that I have been getting more and more work done and it’s so nice to just not worry about too many assignments later on in the day when you’ve already knocked them out early in the day. Therefore, for most people I can confidently say that this book gives good studying techniques and advice to getting better grades through efficient work.