Life Worth Living

Course Description

Welcome to Ohio University, the Honors Tutorial College (HTC), and the HTC firstyear seminar. This class is designed to help you clarify the motivations and purpose behind your education, future goals, and life overall; build community among HTC students; and introduce you to the state of Ohio’s required learning outcomes for all college students (which include, among other aims, ethical reasoning, teamwork, and written communication). To accomplish these goals, we will read texts, write reflections, and participate in a range of in-class and out-of-class group activities focused on exploring three major questions throughout the term: What is a life worth living? What roles do community and education play in a life worth living? How can I shape my life during college in a way I find meaningful? The curriculum that we’re using for this year’s seminar is based on “Life Worth Living,” one of the most popular classes at Yale University, which has been modified for our context here in HTC. Our goal is for each of you to develop your own responses to our three major course questions. To do so, we will engage with ideas, materials, and writing throughout the term from different leaders, thinkers, and traditions in the realms of culture, philosophy, religion, science, and spirituality that provide their own, varied answers to our major course questions. We will also share our own stories and points of view with one another as we consider why life is worth living and the roles that community and education ought to play within our lives. Importantly, this course asks you to consistently interact with belief and thought traditions likely different from your own and to consistently interact and share your individual stories with one another. We will engage course materials that represent parts of Buddhist, Christian, Confucianist, Jewish, and Muslim traditions, and we will also explore materials that represent secular approaches to life and meaning. Furthermore, we will be joined by guests from different programs, departments, and offices at Ohio University and by different local leaders who will share their own insights into our major course questions. Ultimately, through reflection, discussion, sharing, and writing, you will hone your understanding of your own values when it comes to life, community, and education; your understanding of your peers’ values regarding these issues; and your ability to articulate, demonstrate, and act upon your values. While exploring the major questions at the center of our work may at times seem lofty or overwhelming, we encourage you to see the asking and answering of such questions as practical, inevitable, and livable. You will be creating and/or clarifying a system and vision for your own sense of community, education, and meaning in college and for your life beyond college. Our goal is for you each to develop a set of community members, friends, goals, ideas, materials, memories, principles, writings, and/or questions to return to as you pursue your own goals and your own senses of meaning, purpose, and community beyond this class. The materials we engage, people we interact with, and questions we explore are designed to help you become a strong student within the HTC and a person in closer touch with your own life’s significance and direction. Readings, in-class activities, discussions, team projects, grades, and other assignments will hold you accountable for doing so along the way.