Well somehow I messed up and have been posting to the wrong blog for this class. My bad. I thought about just copy/pasting the contents of those blogs over to this one, but when I read what I had posted I realized that I didn’t feel quite the same about my comments, so I completely deleted the comments. I will repost what I think is relevant.

First, the university happiness experiment is in full swing, and I even have partners who are doing the best they can to keep track of when they smile at complete strangers and the reactions they get. I’ll explain more about that in a minute because I want to divulge the results the first week of this university happiness experiment;

Of the recorded response: Out of seventy people on campus ten gave no response, thirteen smiled somewhat, five gave a greeting of some form (said “hi”) twenty-one people gave the look away and smile response (they see you coming and look at the floor, or the wall, or anything that doesn’t require eye contact… then smile). But one guy actually started up a conversation! What was remarkable about this is that I smiled at him from no less than forty feet away! I smiled. He said “How are you?” I said fine, we talked about the weather for about thirty seconds and went our separate ways. I’d never met him before and haven’t seen him since.

This one experience leads me to believe that the distance between the smiler and the smiley is directly related to the personableness of the interaction. For example, while this man had a conversation with me at forty feet, no one smiled on the elevator and actually seemed rather uncomfortable, (but I’m sure they’re just claustrophobic).

In my discussion with others regarding this experiment I’ve decided that defining the many different types of smiles and passing interactions is relevant to the happiness of the university in question. Some of the greetings can have local or regional affiliation, (at U of M- “Go Maze! Go Blue!” Ohio- “O-H! I-O!” the south- “you’re not from ‘round these parts, are ye?” So I’m requesting the different types of greeting noticed around this campus, and from anywhere else. I’ll start listing them and look for how they are represented by this school.

Steelers won. Yea. It sounds like Detroit got mostly winning reviews from its wealthy visitors. This is good. Detroit needs the boost, and the money.