Moving into college is exciting. Whether you are a returning student or a first year, we all are prone to experiencing “the honeymoon phase”, that initial wave of excitement we feel when starting something new, seeing and making new friends, and being around other motivated and energized individuals. This leaves us happy, excited, and engaged, feeling a great sense of our overall well-being entering the semester. However, two to four weeks after our happy honeymoon, we often find ourselves already feeling overwhelmed, unengaged, and even depressed.
In a study looking at campus-based students in higher education, student engagement decreases by about 50% and does not recover due to the pressure of exams and other stress inducers that were not present earlier in the term. Not only do we see less engagement after work picks up and our honeymoon period comes to an end, but we change our behaviors throughout the semester, resulting in a decrease in happiness. This particular study showed a distinct correlation between surveyed students’ levels of on-campus learning engagement and happiness throughout the term.
When simple things like homework and exams pick up, it is easy to find yourself isolated, engaging less in fun, and feeling overwhelmed. However, there is an antidote: simply preserving happiness. Sustaining happiness is most critical to success, as happiness acts as an advantage and an engine for success.
A behavioral study, conducted by Cornell University, proved the importance of happiness in the most stressful environments. The researchers studied a group of physicians at Henry Ford Hospital and found that those that were made to feel happy demonstrated more creative thinking all while making faster, and more accurate diagnoses when compared to the control group. In fact, happy physicians made more accurate diagnoses twice as fast as the control group. Better yet, the simple thing that had primed these physicians to be happy was candy. It was not any larger lifestyle change, cash incentive, or a vacation prior to the experiment. While cash incentives, fun vacations, and exciting times can certainly make us happy, we often forget—especially when under stress—that these are by no means the only things that can make us happy.
Now, it is easy to think that I am offering an implausible or fanciful solution. Unfortunately, Stevens doesn’t so generously hand out candy to combat our decreasing engagement. Furthermore, at the end of the day, homework is still there, and the exam date does not change just because you took a happiness break. It is often thought that when work picks up, we must hit the books and isolate ourselves away from our friends, skip class to cram for the next exam or spend all night in the library. Happily, I inform you that there are ample ways to stay happy while attending to your academics. In fact, a study done by the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom found the learning behaviors making students happiest and most engaged were using social media as a learning tool, working with friends, and attending teaching sessions. Learning to use personal social networks in an academic environment can be beneficial to classroom success as well as personal satisfaction.
The simplest of things, like giving a doctor a piece of candy, has the power to increase their happiness to the point where they perform better in multiple dimensions. Similarly, the small act of working with a friend on your next calculus assignment and being engaged in a lecture can boost your happiness and yield the results you want to see.
Imagine the academic power we could all unleash if we were happy every time we sat down to take an exam or walked into a lecture. The untapped potential in our lives throughout the semester is our happiness, and sustaining it is vital to your success. Luckily, this is incredibly plausible without having to take a vacation or make some dramatic lifestyle change.
We often abandon even the small activities that make us happy when work picks up. We bail on the friends we see, the daily workout we used to do, and the fun activities we are so fortunate to have access to. But engaging in those simple everyday happiness boosters is vital to our success academically and socially. Happiness leads to success. Not the other way around.
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