PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY COURSE
The Theory and Practice of Living Well
The Theory and Practice of Living Well is a 3-unit, semester-long course taught to Pepperdine students during their first year on campus, as part of Pepperdine’s First Year Seminar program.
The intention of the First Year Seminar program is to serve as an intellectual and social foundation for the student’s degree. First Year Seminar courses are designed to spark curiosity, cultivate written and verbal communication skills, and lay a foundation for critical thinking that lasts throughout the undergraduate career.
As we designed the course, The Theory and Practice of Living Well, we chose to organize the content around the question, “What does living well look like?” To this end, the kick off writing assignment is a 1000-word essay responding to the prompt, “I am/am not living well because…” Students always struggle with this assignment (and that is the point) because their criteria for judging the quality of their life is underdeveloped. In the semester that follows, our course meetings guide students through analyzing living well through the framework of the 8 sections of the wheel of life, introducing thinkers, articles, videos, research, case studies, and personal exercises. Students process their findings through discussion questions, individual and group projects, speeches and presentations, and essays.
The final project of the semester is for each student to write an original Living Well Manifesto: a statement of what it looks like to live well. This paper is the accumulation of the thinking they have done for the whole semester and serves as a guidepost for future thought and action.
