ENED3094: The Happiness of Pursuit

The greatest engine to personal and community development is passion. Without passion, good ideas wither, efforts are dropped, and problems are left unattended. In order to become self-fulfilled and citizen scholars, students must first learn what goals are worth pursuing and what efforts are worth expanding for themselves -- not for their parents, their mentors, or their leaders. An equally great challenge is knowing how to pursue one’s passion in an effective way -- without burning out, without sacrificing results, etc. The purpose of this course is to help students learn how to think critically about these issues and apply them to their own life. We take this to be a necessary condition to becoming global citizens and for solving the world’s complex problems. Such problems require tenacity and grit, and will only be solved by people who are passionate about them. The course is intended to help students discover their passion and pick the right complex problem to solve. We will also discuss problem-solving principles in general, as part of structuring personal pursuits.

Go ahead and admit it, you’ve got a dream in you! What would achieving that dream be like? What would pursuing it be like? This seminar guides students in exploring the framework of quest-pursuit (described in The Happiness of Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau) along with philosophical frameworks for achieving happiness. Students will identify, engage and reflect on academic quests (example: using their intellectual skills to solve/engage community or world’s complex problems), personal quests (example: attending mass in all catholic churches in Cincinnati) and professional quests (example: expending their network by one each week). One of these quests will be semester-long, the remaining quests will be weekly or monthly. Assessment will be done through in-class discussion, sharing, and journal reflection.