The main learning that occurred throughout this week was through the exploration of finding a podcast that would be interesting and applicable to myself and experiences. The podcast that I ended up landing on was called “How to Build a Happy Life: How to Live When You’re in Pain.” The guest speaker went through an extremely traumatic event during his college years which caused him to lose three of his limbs. The difficulty of dealing with emotional pain and loss is difficult during any stage of life. However, the emerging adulthood stage of life presents additional challenges when dealing with pain and suffering. College is an extremely difficult period of life which is comprised of highly stressful periods in addition to many difficult decisions that must be made. This period of our lives rarely comes without troubles and pain, so I think it is essential to know how to deal with these difficulties appropriately.
Developing research questions and proper academic inquiry on topics that are directly academic can be slightly more difficult because research and topics can be more challenging to discover. However, I decided to be dedicated to focusing on this topic because, as I have previously explained, I think it is important and highly relevant in college and for the rest of life. Additionally, a personal aspect and interest in the
Reading the article titled “Academic inquiry and developing a research question” aided in this attempt to establish research questions for this topic. I knew that I would be able to create appropriate research questions because this is a heavily studied aspect of psychology. The first thing that I did after reading this article is listen to the podcast again and take detailed notes on the main points covered. The main points included ideas such as life has a necessary amount of pain and suffering, happiness is not the absence of pain, and grieving the losses as they come to you can help individuals cope with their current and future suffering. These were the ideas that I wanted to turn into research questions. Then, I decided I wanted to focus on how much psychological pain impacts people’s ability to function in their daily lives, and if different societies have unique perspectives on pain which can impact the grieving process. The next step within this process included figuring out a way to discuss and cover this information through questions. I had to look through the checklist on the article to edit and improve my research questions.