Finding Happiness in Education

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” This is a question that every person in every place in the world has been asked at least a time or two, right? I know I have. When I was a young child until the time that I entered college, the most popular question that I heard was in regards to my future career choice. Well, Logan LaPlante in his TED talk titled, “Hackschooling Makes Me Happy” made me think about this question in a whole new perspective.Why can’t we be just as focused on happiness and health as we are about a grade, a college, or a job? The answer is that we should be. There is no job that I am going to excel at without first acknowledging my health and happiness. Logan LaPlante had many great points throughout his talk, but one that I agree with most is the idea of being healthy and happy as a part of our education. So what can we do to implement this way of thinking? We can hack!

As LaPlante mentioned, the word hacking often has a negative connotation associated with it, but in reality, it is a practice of finding ways to make things better. In fact, as Bud Hunt mentioned in his article “Centering on Essential Lenses: Make/Hack/Play”, the original meaning of hacking was  “a fiddle that improved a process or program”. So, in the sense of the original definition, let’s hack learning. Our learning processes can help us find our happiness within our education. As LaPlante did, we should find ways to learn that excite and motivate us. Regardless of the way we are learning, we should be doing so while considering our happiness and health.

I think that often as students, we forget about our well-being because it seems unimportant when compared a GPA or career. As Dr. Walsh told LaPlante, people are more focused on making a living than making a life. This statement really struck me because of how absolutely accurate it is. When I was considering career choices, I realized that education was the department that I wanted to be in, but it was also the department that I told myself I couldn’t be in. Everyone told me that going into education is not going to make a lot of money, and unfortunately, that is what prevents so many from doing it. I tried two other majors that would make me more money before I realized that I would rather be happy at my job everyday than be rich. I think that being happy is something that is overlooked in today’s society, and that is not how it should be. I think we should all make it our goal to focus on our happiness, health, and well-being in everything that we do.

The TED talk that I referred to is called “Hackschooling Makes Me Happy”: Logan LaPlante’s TED Talk

The article that I referred to is called “Centering On Essential Lenses: Centering on Essential Lenses

Photo CC by Bob Doran

 

Thank you for reading,

Kayla