Harvard's Happiness Course

Colleges & Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<p>I was wondering if any of the Harvard students who frequent this board are planning to take Psychology 1504 (Positive Psychology, aka Happiness 101) this semester. When it was last given two years ago, it was the most popular course on campus. My son went to the first lecture today and said there was an overflow crowd at Sanders Theater (Harvard's largest hall), with probably over 1,000 students. The course focuses on the psychology of how to be happy. Definitely a course I would have taken if it had been offered when I was there.</p>

<p>Here are links to a story from the last time it was offered, as well as an article on the subject from Harvard Magazine:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/03/10/harvards_crowded_course_to_happiness/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/03/10/harvards_crowded_course_to_happiness/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://harvardmagazine.com/2007/01/the-science-of-happiness.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://harvardmagazine.com/2007/01/the-science-of-happiness.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Thanks for the links.</p>

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<p>Just to cover all the Ivy bases...Mary Seligman, the "father of positive psychology", is a Penn professor.</p>

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<p>When I visited Harvard in April of '06, I was able to sit in on (okay fine, I snuck into the class) Positive Psychology and from what I could tell, everyone was having a blast. There was music playing and people were up on stage getting ready to perform skits or something. Sanders Theater is really beautiful and it seemed like one big party :]</p>

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<p>I'm taking the course! It's awesome!</p>

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<p>My son has decided to take it as well and sounds equally enthusiastic about it.</p>

<p>The preliminary enrollment numbers are posted, and it's showing an enrollment of 588. This puts it in second place after Mankiw's introductory economics course, which is at 654. (I'm not counting expository writing, which is required of all freshmen.) Here's a link to the enrollment statistics:</p>

<p><a href="http://webdocs.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/reports/statistics/course_enrollment_statistics_icg.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://webdocs.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/reports/statistics/course_enrollment_statistics_icg.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>It's actually pretty interesting to see how many courses have relatively small enrollments - a contrast to the stereotype of all big courses at Harvard.</p>