Humor Diary

This post is a reflection for a course I am taking at Renison University College at the University of Waterloo. The course is titled Positive Psychology and is taught by Professor Denise Marigold, currently the Chair of Social Development Studies.

The topic of the reflection is from the course, though the response is my own.

Over the past week, each day I wrote down the two funniest things that happened to me each day. Here I will be looking back at some of the funniest things from the week.

Journal

Day 1

So to start things off, I've quickly realized this is definitely going to be hard. The only time I can remember laughing was in a conversation I had with someone I was talking to over a Zoom call. I can't remember exactly what was funny though.

Day 2

Today I watched a hilarious YouTube video of a doctor reviewing medical scenes from South Park. I also got a chance to talk with my grandparents, and we laughed a lot telling stories and such. I think both were really funny but laughing with my grandparents I good for longer afterwards.

Day 3

I think I remember laughing at a TikTok in the morning, but I don't remember the details. Later in the day I chatted with my friend's dad on Zoom, and we laughed together while chatting.

Day 4

I am not sure I laughed at anything

Day 5

I remember laughing once in the morning while still in bed, and then I laughed again while on a Discord call with one of my best friends.

Day 6

I watched some funny videos

Day 7

I don't remember anything funny happening

Discussion

Looking back over the past week, the first thing that strikes me is that having two funny things happen to me per day was setting the bar very high. I averaged remembering laughing just over once per day, and a lot of the time it was just a funny video I saw. I didn't record a hypothesis, but I think this is probably a bit higher than I would have guessed, but definitely twice a day is a high bar for me.

It seems like the things I found funny can be put in two categories: funny videos and laughing with friends. I am not sure either are well described by "funny thing that happened", so if that is the standard then not much happened this week. I would say I generally laughed harder at the funny videos than I did joking around with friends, but I do remember at least one of the times laughing really hard with my best friend. I would say I thought about and remember the times laughing on video calls with friends more than I do the funny videos, which I had to reread my notes to even remember at all.

Even directly after I found it hard to put into words why I laughed. I don't think it is was really a response to some canonically "funny" thing happening, especially in the social situations, where is was almost a way of communicating amusement and positive feelings more than anything.