Envision Your Good Life & Discover Your Great Work
3 College Courses | 8-10 Credits | Transferable
Three Part Program
This multi-faceted, THREE PART experiential program allows you to join a community of fellow students who like you are setting aside a season to live into the big questions of the good life. You’ll cultivate friendships based on the deeper things, get perspective on what really matters, connect to the natural world, practice mindfulness, and explore your creative capacities. Along the way you’ll complete 3 college courses (one at a time) for 10 credits with award-winning professors who embody the spirit of experiential learning.
Students in the Bridge Semester participate in both our in-person January Term (Wintering Writer’s Retreat) and our in-person Good Life May Term program. From February through April, Bridge students participate in (and help to co-create) our dynamic, discussion-based online programming, which includes The Good Life Course plus a three-part Mindfulness Course plus a two-part course on Finding Purpose plus a few casual hangouts. The cohort will stay connected through the virtual portion until reuniting in Maine in May.
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SPACIOUS REFLECTION: We create an environment in which students can think deeply about questions of the good life and begin to discern their own calling: “...the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet,” in the words of Frederick Buechner.
NATURE IMMERSION: We encourage students to connect to nature as a source of grounding, contemplation, insight and joy. Students live on campus here in the coastal woodlands of Maine. They learn to identify trees and plants, hike the preserves, and camp on the Maine Island Trail. Students slow down, sync up with nature and come to recognize their reciprocity with the earth.
INSPIRED ACADEMICS: Our programs are saturated with ideas to live by. We create a retreat-like setting, alive with creative thinking, good books and lively discussion. Our professors guide students through reflective exercises, facilitated conversations and immersive experiences in a non-ideological, non-dogmatic way. All courses at Seguinland Institute bear college credit through our affiliation with UMaine Farmington.
MINDFULNESS: We try to create a context in which students can cultivate the inner resources necessary for personal and community-oriented thriving. This includes daily mindfulness practice: the development of skills for calming and focusing the mind, knitting together fractured attention spans, and learning to sit with mystery.
CREATIVE ARTS: Creativity is the lifeblood of human thriving–for individuals and communities. Too many believe that creativity is the domain of the select few, “the artists”. We create space for all students to explore and expand their innate capacities for creative expression.
BACK TO THE LAND: Our campus is on the site of an old family homestead. In this spirit, we grow some of our own food and try “to live sanely and simply in a troubled world,” to quote Helen & Scott Nearing. We encourage students to grapple with the interconnections between the good life and the food life, as so many pressing issues of our time are food-related: climate change, health, inequality.
THE GOOD LIFE FOR ALL: Questions of the good life for one are inseparable from questions of the good life for all. We encourage our students to recognize that their own well-being is tied up with that of everyone else’s. We seek to instill in our students the skills to build strong and inclusive communities in the 21st Century.
THREE EXPERIENTIAL COURSES
This program helped me feel more affirmed in the hope I have for my future and I am so excited to feel alive. The staff and faculty were like family who supported me through this huge change in my life. It felt like growing up in the best way. I enjoyed the kindness, openness and support all the staff gave us. Living in community takes a lot of effort and I’m glad I got to learn how to put that effort in. Something I wrote in my journal on the last few days of this program is “I didn’t know back then what all of this could mean, and I’m glad that I know now.”
- Arushi, Good Life Alum ‘22
3 College Courses | 10 Credits | Course Credit via UMaine Farmington
PART I (ONSITE IN MAINE)
Wintering: Writing in Fire & Ice | 4 Cr in ENG
Wintering is an invitation to embody this season of fire and ice on the coast of Maine, to allow your creative work to emerge from the reflective rhythms of this time & place. We will explore the confluence of writing and the outdoors, combining reflective study of craft and generative writing exercises with winter adventure.
Visit the Wintering Program Page to LEARN MORE
PART II (NON-RESIDENTIAL/VIRTUAL)
THE GOOD LIFE | 2 Cr in PHI/REL
What will I do with my one, wild and precious life? This course guides students through a process of articulating their values & visions of the good life while reading the best of American nature writing. Our virtual meetings will be dynamic and conversation-based, a chance to integrate the readings with the experiential components of the course.
Please see details below.
PART III (ONSITE IN MAINE)
Community-Building in the 21st Century: Belonging, Creativity, & Good Food For All
4 Cr in PHI/REL, ART, or Liberal Arts
Live in intentional community while exploring the role of creativity and good food in building thriving, resilient communities. Spend time with poet-farmers, artist-foragers, and philosophers of belonging.
Visit our May Term program page to LEARN MORE
CREATING A MEANINGFUL NON-RESIDENTIAL/VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE
The Good Life Course, taught by Philip Francis, will be the wrap-around experience of the non-residential component of the Bridge program. The course will integrate live virtual discussion-based meetings, readings, experiences and journal prompts. To mediate the distance, students will receive “Good Life Packages” in the mail with journals, readings and other goodies.
Woven into the course will be:
1) a three-session course on Cultivating Mindfulness, taught by Ida Lennestål, Seguinland’s Director of Mindfulness;
2) a two-session course on finding your calling, choosing your next steps and living with a sense of purpose, taught by Matt Weeman, Director of Community Life at Seguinland.
We will meet 1-2 times per week for an hour and a half. We anticipate that some students will be participating in other activities (jobs, internships, etc) during this portion of our program. We’ll do our best to flex our meeting times around these other activities.
Plan to dedicate 5-7-ish hours per week to this portion of the Bridge program. For students who want additional assignments, we are happy to accommodate!
ON SITE EXPERIENCE
FOOD LIFE
How Well You Will Eat
We relish the connections between the good life & the food life. We want you to feel healthy & nourished during your time here. We source some food from our own garden, and more from farmer’s markets, local farms & regular old grocery stores.
Collective Cooking & Dining
We want you to come away with more cooking skills than when you arrived. Everyone participates in preparing meals, most of which are prepared collectively in the cookhouse under the guidance of Katie, our “Good Food Facilitator”, and eaten family style at a long table. Some meals are prepped for you by guest chefs.
Highlights
Traditional Maine lobster bake. Workshops on pickling, canning, preserving, fermenting. Guest chefs. Favorite family recipes brought by students. Vegetarian & Vegan & GF & Kosher options.
“This program has changed my life, and has left me with some of the best friends I have ever met. Prior to the Seguinland, I knew it was going to be a fun and adventurous experience. However, it also ended up being insightful and meaningful, and truthfully life changing. I discovered new passions and respect for the world, myself and others. Not a day goes by where something doesn't remind me of my time spent at Seguinland.”
-Tim, Alum Fall Semester‘21 & Wintering ‘23
COTTAGE LIFE
Riverside Accommodations:
During most of your time at Seguinland Institute you will stay in one of our small riverside cottages. Each cottage has a kitchen, bathroom(s), and a porch for river watching. Cottages have 1-3 bedrooms. Students stay in doubles or triples.
Treehouses:
Everyone gets a turn in a lux treehouse with river views and a wood-fired cedar hot tub 18’ up in the trees.
PROGRAM FEES
Tuition: $8,250 (audit) | $9,250 (8 credits) | $9,650 (10 credits)
Cost includes everything: tuition for 8-10 college credits, room & board, gear & books, journals & marshmallows. Travel to/from is Maine NOT included. We can provide pick up at the airport in Portland & the train/bus station in Brunswick.
529 FUNDS:
Yes, families are usually able to use 529 funds to pay for at least a portion of our programs. Please inquire and consult with your financial advisor.
Scholarships:
Need-based & BIPOC scholarships are available. Please don’t hesitate to inquire.
“Action on behalf of life transforms us. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal...”