Happiness, Home, and Here

Subjects

Creative Writing and Happiness Studies

Faculty

Professor Sara McDaniel Wienecke and Sandy Pellerano

Program Summary

Entering college, a new community, and a new place can elicit a range of emotions for any incoming first-year student:  excitement, curiosity, uncertainty, nervousness, etc. Meeting new people, navigating a new place, and managing stressors—while also learning college-level skills and expectations in a variety of disciplines—can be a challenge! This program offers students an opportunity to explore and write authentically about concepts of home and happiness, in the context of the place they come from and the place they’ve come to, as they make their transition into college. Our FYE program’s underlying question is: How can you build a sense of home and happiness wherever you are in the world?  

ENGL 245: Creative Writing on Location: Home and Here (3SH, GEA)

In this course, you will write about your concept of home, where you come from, and where you find yourself at Principia College, in Southern Illinois, next to the Mississippi River. You will have opportunities to observe and explore Principia’s campus and the surrounding area, study poetic and narrative writing techniques through reading various writers, and apply these techniques to your own writing. As you engage in the writing process throughout the semester, you will be part of a supportive community of writers that aims to help each classmate revise, develop, and deepen their writing. 

GLBS 250: Happiness: Global Perspectives (3SH, GESS)

This course will present various cultural perspectives on happiness and the good life, offering you the space to reflect on your own paradigms. You will develop awareness around the achievement of happiness in diverse contexts, including which social and public policies promote happier nations. From cross-cultural to intrapersonal standpoints, we will wrestle with questions such as “Can happiness be measured?” or “How can we best measure happiness?” Throughout the course, we will study the science of happiness and evidence-based strategies for living a more satisfying life, with the end goal of applying these habits to our own lives and communities.

GEN 101 HH ILC: Happiness, Home, and Here (3SH) 

This is a foundational course used to develop, practice, and apply college-level reading, critical thinking, writing, information literacy, and speaking skills while also bridging ideas that you are learning in ENGL 245 and GLBS 250 about happiness, home, and being at Principia College. In the course you will complete an annotated bibliography, a written research project, a reflective essay, and other writing and discussion assignments.