Living Your Values invites students to explore one of life’s most enduring questions: How do we become the kind of people we aspire to be? Rather than prescribing a single ethics code, this course helps students identify the values that genuinely matter to them and explore what it means to embody those values amidst the complexities of everyday life.
Students explore:
- How their own values can be discovered, clarified, and put into practice
- The challenges of living with integrity in a complex world
- How to navigate conflicts between competing values
- How small daily choices shape the kind of person we become
Throughout the course, students experiment with bringing their own values more consciously into their lives. Through reflection, dialogue, and real-world practice, they explore what happens when ideals meet reality, sharing both their successes and their struggles in a supportive, nonjudgmental community. The emphasis is not on moral perfection, but on cultivating greater awareness, honesty, and alignment between what we believe and how we choose to live.
By the end of the course, students develop a more grounded understanding of their own ethical commitments and greater confidence in living them with authenticity. They leave with the recognition that a meaningful life is not built through grand gestures or performative ethics, but through countless small choices that shape their character and, by extension, their communities.
A Deeper Dive
All of us carry values that matter deeply to us: compassion, honesty, justice, creativity, courage, generosity, stewardship, loyalty, or kindness. Yet living in accordance with those values is often far more difficult than identifying them. Modern life continually presents situations in which convenience, comfort, social pressure, or competing obligations pull us away from what we believe is most important. The result is often a painful sense of inner conflict—the feeling that our lives are not fully aligned with our deepest convictions.
This course begins by helping students discover and articulate the values they genuinely wish to live by. Rather than assuming there is a single correct ethical system, we recognize that thoughtful people invariably arrive at different conclusions about what matters most. Students explore these issues with openness and humility, learning that ethical maturity involves not simply adopting a set of fixed values, but continually examining and refining them in light of new experience.
From there, the course becomes an ongoing experiment in lived integrity. Each student chooses a set of commitments to practice over the duration of the course, then reflects on what unfolds. Some may discover that their values call them toward service, activism, or environmental stewardship. Others may focus on strengthening important relationships, cultivating compassion, practicing honesty, or developing greater patience and presence. Along the way, we explore the inevitable tensions that arise when cherished values come into conflict, and we ask how wise people navigate situations where no option perfectly honors every commitment they hold.
Ultimately, Living Your Values is about transforming insight into action. Orientation helps us understand the world. Belonging helps us discover our place within it. This course asks what naturally follows: Given what I know, and given who I am, how do I want to live? Students don’t leave this course with a finished ethical system, but rather, with a deeper capacity to bring their beliefs into conversation with their daily choices, gradually forging a life of integrity and authentic participation.
Course Content
Course Includes
- 1 Class
