A Friday Night Lights character drafts a self-evaluation for college applications:

TYRA [Voice Over] Two years ago, I was afraid of wanting anything. I figured wanting would lead to trying and trying would lead to failure. But now I find I can’t stop wanting. I want to fly somewhere in first class. I want to travel to Europe on a business trip. I want to get invited to the White House. I want to learn about the world. I want to surprise myself. I want to be important. I want to the best person I can be. I want to define myself instead of having others define me. I want to win and have people be happy for me. I want to loose and get over it. I want to not be afraid of the unknown. I want to grow up to generous and big-hearted, the way that people have been with me. I want an interesting and surprising life. It’s not that I think I’m going to get all these things. I just want the possibility of getting them. College represents possibility, the possibility that things are going to change. I can’t wait.

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“Happiness is largely related to one’s sense of belonging,” Katie McColgan declares in a simulated survey of affiliative traits that she devised for a Liberal Arts 400-level “summative elective,” Friday Night Lights: An American Mirror.”

Friday Night Lights is a television series treating high school life in an imaginary Texas small city.

Says Professor Robert Gerst: “Katie evaluated characters who play leading roles in the show. Katie learned affiliative personality analysis in LASS-281 (Psychology of Flourishing). She used that lens to analyze, as if they were real people, her fictional subjects.”