"It's a rare thing to have an oversubscribed course in the humanities, because students are trained to go into technology, engineering, and math, (...) but this course has been oversubscribed for a decade," said Matthew Croasmun, director of the 'Life Worth Living' program.

In an interview with Lusa by telephone on the occasion of the launch of the book "A Life with Meaning", based on the course he directs at Yale University in the USA, the professor said that more than 700 students have already taken the 13-week program, which is equivalent to a semester course.

Created in 2014 by the book's other two authors, Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, the course aimed to respond, on the one hand, to an increase in mental health problems among higher education students in the USA and, on the other hand, to "a kind of meaninglessness".

"There's a kind of aimlessness among students who, especially at our university, an elite university, have all the opportunities in the world and can feel very empowered and very free, but have no idea how to choose among the different options," he said.

Since then, demand for the course has been growing among students at Yale, but also from other universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and even in Hong Kong or Malaysia.

"It's a growing movement among colleges and students. We have a network of affiliated colleges with over 30 institutions," said Croasmun.

Although with different formats depending on the context, the course aims to help students "marry the best of their intellectual energies with the deepest existential questions".

According to Croasmun, students of all generations have faced existential questions such as the meaning of life and there are thousands of years of human history of struggle with these questions.

"If you spend time listening to those voices, reflecting carefully and thinking with yourself and with a community of people who are asking those same questions, you can make a lot of progress, you can learn to articulate those questions better and have a greater sense of meaning and purpose in life," he argued.

Citing spiritual leaders such as Jesus, Muhammad, or Buddha, but also contemporary thinkers such as Robin Walt Kimmerer, James Baldwin, or C.S. Lewis, the authors present in their book, published in Portugal by Planeta, a guide with starting points, roadmaps, and habits of reflection that aim to help readers understand what makes life truly worthwhile.

Asked about the real effect of the course that serves as the basis for the book, Croasmun said that a study that compared students who took the course with a control group showed that there is "a real difference: students' sense of life increases in those 13 weeks".

Even among students who took the course during the pandemic, who started in January 2020 with no idea that something difficult was going to happen and ended up immersed in a global pandemic, "the sense of life increased significantly".

Croasmun also reported some concrete examples of students who chose careers with social benefits because of the course, students who rediscovered their grandparents' cultural or religious traditions, and others who reported being able to better describe their vision of life to people who do not share the same vision.

"This is very important to us, especially in this country that is so polarized. That our students feel they have gained more ability to articulate their values with people very different from them, that they can listen and discuss difficult issues like religion with people who do not agree with them (...) are changes that we consider very, very significant".

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