Happiness is weird. Everyone wants it and everyone posts about it, but no one explains it to us and how does it work. If you ask five random people about what happiness for them is, you most likely get five completely different answers. For some of the people it's being financially success, and for others it's being in peace. For someone else, it's canceling plans and getting more than eight hours of sleep. Happiness is something very personal which makes it both powerful and confusing.
Still, most of us grow up hearing the same thing, which is to work hard and get a good grade, build a strong career, make money and happiness will spawn in your life — it's treated like a bonus level you unlock after suffering in life. The problem is that real life does not always follow that script.
All This Success… Now Why Am I Tired?
People reach far away in their life exactly where they have dreamed of and still feel anxious, burned out, or weirdly empty. That gap shows a weird thing — if success does somehow create happiness, why are we not happy?
For a long time, happiness has been treated as something soft or secondary, almost like a side topic. Universities focus on developing skills, knowledge, and professional competence — all of them are important. But emotional wellbeing is often left behind for students to figure out on their own.
Even top Universities have begun to recognize this gap. At Yale University, psychology professor Laurie Santos created a class called The Science of Well-Being. You would expect students at one of the highest ranking universities around the world to care much more about finance, law, medicine, or politics. Instead, this course about happiness became one of the most popular classes in Yale's history. Many high achieving students chose to study wellbeing — these were not lazy students trying to avoid important subjects. They were ambitious, trying to understand how to live well.
This course later evolved into The Science of Wellbeing and reached millions of learners online. That level of interest is not random curiosity. It proves how much students need it. And it showed that academic success and emotional stability are not the same thing. Clearly people want tools not to only perform well, but to feel well.
"If one of the highest universities can make space for happiness in the classroom, others can too."
Happiness Isn't Soft — It's Strategic
Teaching happiness doesn't mean lowering standards or replacing important subjects. It means introducing research-based knowledge about how habits change mood, how social connections affect mental health, how constant comparison affects self-worth, and how purpose develops overtime rather than being magically discovered.
These are not just theoretical ideas — they are practical insights backed by psychology. Universities impose daily routines: study schedules, exams, workloads, social pressures, and competition. This can highly damage student sleep schedules, mental health, and physical health. Even students who graduate at the top of the class may still feel exhausted and anxious, feeling lost and disconnected from the outside world.
Building Lives, Not Just Careers
Education not only helps students prepare for careers — it also helps them know how to live meaningful and sustainable lives. A university degree is not just a ticket to a job; it guides students to learn, improve self-awareness, and even discover themselves. Even though grades are often used to measure success, they do not guarantee happiness.
Ambition and success are important — they give us motivation toward our life goals — but without balance and emotional strength, ambition can turn into burnout. Many students graduate exhausted and anxious, overthinking whether they measure up even with an impressive academic record. Academic knowledge is often not automatically connected with personal wellbeing.
This leads to the point that happiness should not be assumed to be a personal problem for students to figure out alone. It is essential for universities to add wellbeing as part of education. If added to the curriculum, it will help students prepare for life and support the emotional skills they need.
TRINITY NEWSROOM PROJECT · AT3 MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS · 2026
