A psychology professor at Yale University is teaching hundreds of students how to be happy through her ‘Psychology and the Good Life’ course.
According to the university website, it’s the most popular course in Yale’s history, with nearly a quarter of all Yale undergraduates enrolled in the class in its first year of being offered.
In an email, Laurie Santos, the professor who developed the course, said the goal of the course is to teach students strategies that they can apply in a university setting to become less stressed and to fight the “culture of over-work.”
“I think it’s the perfect setting to learn about and apply this material,” she said. “I also realized that students were looking for answers to big questions and that psychology might be able to help.”
A 2016 survey by the National College Health Assessment of over 25,000 Ontario post-secondary students, showed that 65 per cent of those students experienced overwhelming anxiety, and 46 per cent reported feeling depressed to the point that it was difficult to function.
Santos acknowledged her own struggles with being happy and finding happiness in her syllabus, stating “this course is just as much for me as it is for you.”
“Personally, I really care for a lot of my students and wanted to help them out, so there was that personal motivation,” she said.
But, like any other lecture-style course, Santos’ class requires the typical readings, assignments, midterms, and final exam.
“The course also has a second set of requirements, which I will (somewhat cheesily) refer to as your ‘Course Rewirements,’” she said. “The goal of the rewirements is [to] ‘rewire’ students’ automatic habits and strategies. The rewirements are a series of activities and exercises aimed at making students feel happier, healthier, and more resilient.”
Santos said that the course helped change some of her students’ habits, which is having a positive effect on their well-being, and is really exciting to her.
Carleton University also offers a similar course called ‘Positive Psychology,’ which was taught in the fall semester by Katie Gunnell.
Gunnell said most of the courses that students are taking in psychology are ones that tend to have a heavier focus on “negative” aspects, such as mental illness.
“This class kind of flips it and talks more about the positive sides of functioning,” she said. “So happiness, well-being, engaging in healthful [habits] that help people do better.”
Like Santos’ course, Gunnell’s also has a series of assignments and assessments, however the “rewirements” are also evident in small positive psychology activities students must do.
“For example, one week, students did acts of kindness, so some people bought a stranger a coffee in line at Tim Horton’s or put little notes in library books, things like that,” Gunnell explained.
Gunnell said that the field of positive psychology is relatively new, so some students’ questions cannot be answered because they’ve yet to be properly researched.
“I would think that students should go into it open-minded,” she said, “It’s definitely not an easy course, it requires a lot of critical thought, and the reality is that positive psychology is an emerging field that is full of disagreements on how to define certain things.”
Photo by Marieta Osezua
