WHAT?

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I finished up my fourth year with my final semester in Fall 2021. I took only four classes: Business Strategy Capstone, Branding, and two honors philosophy courses that included Feminist Philosophy, and the Happiness of Pursuit. Happiness of Pursuit was taught by two instructors, a philosophy professor and an engineering professor. It consisted of reading Happiness of Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau which outlined how to approach and do our quests, reading many philosophical theories of happiness, and then of course, the quests themselves. Implied from the title of the book that the class is based on, these quests are about the journey and pursuit rather than the destination. We chose 2 quests—1 short trial run quest and 1 long quest—that we thought would bring us happiness. My short quest was to cook for myself everyday (which I failed at), and my long quest was to have coffee chats weekly with strangers (which I also failed at, but succeeded in a different way). 

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SO WHAT?

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I took this course knowing that the main purpose of the course was the quests, and not the typical philosophy class of just reading theory (which we did in addition to the quests). I wanted to do quests that I thought would make me happy, but unfortunately, they made me very stressed. While the actual end product/destination would have made me very happy, the journey/pursuit was not ideal. However, this bumpy journey mixed with the course content taught me a lot about project management, time management, what makes me happy and feel fulfilled, and how much I value my relationships with friends. I certainly learned that I have horrible time management, no matter how well I might manage the project in theory. When it comes to personal projects (as opposed to work or school), my time management goes out the window. I felt like I had no time to dedicate to my quests despite the fact that I have hours of free time a day, but I had no set schedule week-to-week which made it difficult to plan ahead. So, I learned about myself that I need at least a bit of structure to manage. However, my most important lesson came from failure with my large quest. I originally wanted to do coffee chats with strangers, but I had too much anxiety approaching strangers (which I was trying to get over through this quest but it did not work out) so I ended up doing the coffee chats with my friends and acquaintances instead. These coffee chats strengthened my relationships with these people in my life and allowed me to have deeper bonds with existing people in my life instead of shallow ones with new people/strangers. The coffee chats were about community, what community means to them, and how one can build community and be more involved in the communities they are in. 

 

NOW WHAT?

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Now that I’ve learned how bad I am at time management, it’s been rough to try to be better. Now that I have a more structured schedule, (I currently work a 9-5,) it’s been easier to manage my time, but it also stresses me out that I cannot do multiple things in one day. I have observed about myself that I can truly only commit to maybe one or two additional things in my day. If I go to the gym, I can’t also go to the grocery store. If I cook a nice meal, I can’t also go to the gym, etc. The quests were a wake-up call for my time management, and I’m starting to learn how to have better time management with my personal engagements. 

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I have always known I’ve valued relationships with others versus anything else in the world—I could be the most successful person, or the world’s richest person, or anything that brings people validation, but what is important to me is having high-quality relationships with the people in my life. It was so nice to chat with my friends and change my perspective on my quest. While I was upset for failing to talk to strangers, it felt like a blessing in disguise. I got to talk to my friends about a topic (community) that is important to me, and learn different perspectives. While I didn’t necessarily learn many technical or hard skills, I learned a lot about myself and how I function as a person which was the main reason I got into my philosophy minor in the first place. I wanted to better understand my thoughts, myself, etc., and I feel like this course really helped me to do so.  

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SAMPLE OF WORK

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Below is my presentation (which was mostly verbal, the slides were just support) of my long quest!