Students and professors provide an exclusive behind the scenes look into their classrooms.
Classes are back in full swing at Northern Essex Community College!
The parking lots are packed, student success services and centers are helping students get settled into the fall semester and classrooms are full of in-depth discussions between students and professors.
Among the several courses offered at NECC, one of them is exploring a meaningful topic.
This semester the Philosophy of Happiness course taught by Meredith Gunning will examine “different perspectives on what counts as happiness, along with how to attain it in the flow of everyday life” explained the course description on the NECC Blackboard page.
In addition, students will have the opportunity to study “Various philosophers, psychologists, writers, spiritual leaders and figures in pop culture” continued the course description.
The course is starting the semester off and setting a foundation by asking what is happiness?
There are an endless number of possible answers and responses to this question. During one of the classes, the students collaborated to create a definition of happiness.
They said it is a combination of “pleasure and meaning” that requires an individual to pivot “inward” to understand themselves, and to pivot “outward (towards) developing deep and long term connections” with other people, said the students in the Philosophy of Happiness class.
By teaching this course, Professor Gunning is “hoping” her students “get to read perspectives that they wouldn’t have otherwise and to get a variety of views on happiness and thinking through their own thoughts about views they (do or do not) agree with” said Gunning.
The structure of the course “is not just geared to thinking of happiness, but trying to get to try out different strategies” related to “improving the quality of (student’s) lives,” said Gunning.
As the rest of the semester goes on, the Philosophy of Happiness course will unravel “what is most important (to them personally,) and look through the perspectives that resonate and (the ones that) don’t resonate (and with that,) hopefully [the class will] reach a deeper, longer lasting state of well being” said Gunning.
