Should we be required to take ‘What is the Good Life?’

One of the biggest goals in life for the majority of the world is to be happy. You would think that’s something you need to figure out on your own, but UF begs to differ.

“What is the Good Life?” is a required freshman course that attempts to teach how to live a good life by forcing students to remember random readings for random quizzes. In theory, this class is a good freshman bonding course, but the execution is poor.

The Tab asked fellow Gators if they think the Good Life course should be required.

Grace Cope, Biology, freshman

I don’t think it should be required because you get a lot of kids who don’t really want to be a part of it and so the discussions are pretty lame and feel forced. It’s not as intellectual as it should be as opposed to having kids who actually want to be in the class and give an effort towards the material we’re going over. If it wasn’t required, we would have cool people and discussions about interesting things.

Bryce Schiebel, Environmental Engineering, sophomore

The Good Life class is a very good idea, but in execution it’s terrible because students aren’t brought together by the fact that they share common experiences. You don’t really learn pertinent information and it takes a lot of time that is not necessary.

Alejandro Guerra, Political Science, freshman

People should be able to take the Good Life class, but it shouldn’t be mandatory. That way the people who actually enjoy taking the class can do the work while others that don’t want to do it don’t have to.

Connor Jenkins, Aerospace Engineering, freshman

I don’t believe the Good Life should be required for freshman students at the University of Florida. As an Engineering major, I took the class and while some of the aspects were interesting, I find that the time that I spent studying for that class could have been better spent studying for my actual major.

The things I did learn, while interesting, would be better as an elective credit that could be an option so I think that if people didn’t have to take the class, there would still be an interest. Forcing people to take this class kind of distracts from your interests in your major and also from your freshman year experience.

Jordene West, Accounting, freshman

I took it last semester and I felt like it was a waste of time. We don’t really learn any useful information and we just read.

Caley Rafferty, Linguistics, junior

It’s like high school again. It makes it difficult to transition into college because you’re still doing busywork in one other class.

Morgan Denny, Public Relations, freshman

I don’t think it should be required because I think that the readings are interesting, but making them required, forces kids to read about things that are controversial to their beliefs or their religion. Forcing kids to talk about it for participation points kind of goes against their views.

I just don’t think that is morally appropriate. If you want to talk about or indulge yourself in that kind of stuff, you should have that option. You shouldn’t be forced to.

Amanda Cournoyer, Anthropology, junior

I don’t think Good Life should be required. I’m a transfer and haven’t taken it and I’m a junior. I think it’s ridiculous that I am going to have to take this class.

Emily Netburn, English, freshman

I absolutely don’t think this class should be required. We are not being exposed to the kinds of things that were the initial ideas of the class that they wanted us to be exposed to.

It’s definitely a philosophy kind of class so you would expect to be expanding our minds and working things out on our own and coming up with our own conclusion as to what the Good Life is because it is very relative. It’s not something you can regurgitate from a textbook.

Instead of expanding our minds, they are making us tell them what they think the Good Life is. It’s just a bunch of memorization.

Andre Drysdale, Environmental Engineering, freshman

The idea behind the Good Life course is a good idea, but they executed it very poorly. The whole idea is to open someone’s mind to help to make students more well-rounded people, but they just say to read the books and then regurgitate this information on paper. This doesn’t require much thinking, it requires basic high school skills.

Nialang Patel, Electrical Engineering, freshman

I think the Good Life should not be required because I just felt like it didn’t benefit me at all. All the things they made me think about, I had already thought about and I didn’t need the class to help me think of what my life should be like and how I should progress in life.

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Although the Good Life course is interesting, it most certainly should not be required. Forcing students to find their own “good life” from a standard set of readings to memorize devalues the personal journey to happiness for each individual.