Laurie Santos greeted her Yale University students with slips of paper that explained: No class today.
It was mid-semester (学期). With exams and papers coming, everyone was exhausted and stressed. There was one rule: They couldn't use the one hour and a quarter of unexpected free time to study, and they had to just enjoy it. Nine students hugged her. Two burst into tears.
Santos, a professor of psychology, had planned to give a lecture about what researchers have learned about how important time is to happiness, but she created a special class on the psychology of living a joyful, meaningful life and she wanted the lessons to stick. All semester, she explained why we think the way we do. Then, she challenged students to use that knowledge to change their own lives.
On that spring afternoon, nearly a quarter of the undergraduate students were enjoying an unexpected break at the same time. No, not just enjoying it-really loving the gift they had been given. Skyler Robinson, a sophomore, had been confused for a moment by all the possibilities it opened up. He felt very, very happy. Then, he took a nap. "That nap," he said, "was fantastic."
Santos designed this class after she realized, as the head of a residential college at Yale, that many students were stressed out and unhappy, struggling through long days that seemed to her far more crushing (惨重的) and joyless than her own college years.
Santos said students were most skeptical of the idea that good grades aren't essential to happiness. And when she joked she was going to teach them that by giving everyone "D", she was flooded with calls from frightened students and parents. Santos told them she was creating a center for the good life at the college she leads at Yale. As for the good life, she told them they already know how to live it-they just have to practice and put in hard work.
So many students have told her the class changed their lives. "If you're really grateful, show me that." she told them. "Change the culture."
