As the new year begins, students are setting resolutions and looking for ways to start fresh, both personally and academically. This season of renewal presents the perfect opportunity to reflect on personal growth while maintaining an academic balance. LPPL 2100, “The Resilient Student,” offers a unique opportunity to discuss and study personal life skills in an academic environment and is applicable to students of many different backgrounds. This course equips the student with powerful tools to not just be a resilient student, but a resilient person beyond the grades on paper. Because of the benefits of this course, the University should work to thoroughly encourage students to take personal development courses, perhaps even making these courses part of the general education curriculum.
LPPL 2100 integrates readings from statistical studies, psychology and cognitive sciences as academic disciplines which guide class content and prove how personal development operates. While this interdisciplinary approach is hugely important to the course, the real benefit of LPPL 2100 lies in its pedagogy, which is consciously executed through carefully-structured assignments, designed to provoke self-reflection, growth and resilience. Resilience is the ultimate end goal of this course and boils down to being antifragile in the face of life’s unpredictability and obstacles. This is something from which everyone can benefit, but it is also something which requires extensive and conscious reflection.
Personal development courses as a whole bring the focus back to the student, independent of their academics and grades. This is best exemplified in the resilience project, a semester-long project in the LPPL 2100 designed by the student for the student’s specific goals. This cornerstone project begins with a proposal outlining what the student wishes to work on, followed by a reflection on their progress. To make the journey tangible and data-driven, students create trackers and maintain journals to document their efforts. For example, a student aiming to grow spiritually might track prayers and reflect on the process each day. Another student who may struggle with social anxiety may opt to try to speak to one new person each day…