My re-education

Remember when I said I was going to take some online classes this fall? One of them started this week.

Man, am I out of practice for this.

It's called A Global History of Architecture. There are three video lectures a week, each with homework questions and associated reading, and four exams over the next twelve weeks. Now, I always loved school. I was always a so-called "brain," graduating at the top of my film class in college, in the top 10 of my high school graduating class (stupid gym grades from freshman year really put a dampener on breaking the top 5). But it has been fifteen years since I've had to crack open a textbook and apply myself so diligently.

I have just crashed the past two nights after doing the reading.

It's not light stuff. And it's not only a little. I read a hundred pages of this text last night. Part of the issue is probably that this is not, and has never been, my area of study. I'm not a big fan of studying history outside of the very specific eras that interest me. Most of my education was in the arts and English subjects (and math, but only because that was always my easy A). I chose this because architecture itself interests me, but it's more entrenched in the history than I anticipated.

It's not a bad thing. Just unexpected.

The hope is that I'll fall into the habit of studying soon enough to make it less taxing. That cooking class starts in a couple weeks, and on top of that, I'm taking a guitar refresher course that starts in a month. Those are my fun classes. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

And don't be surprised if you see details from what I'm learning start to show up in my writing.

Ongoing education

It's never too old to learn. Funny how it's always people older than thirty who say that.

But it's true, and I'm putting my brain where my mouth is this fall. I've been looking into an online learning environment called edX after seeing its president on a July episode of The Colbert Report. It's a variety of college-level courses put together by professionals from a number of prestigious universities, like MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley, then placed online. People can take them for free, working at their own pace within the time frame the course provides, usually 6-12 weeks.

The one course I know for sure I'm going to try is called Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science. Since that doesn't start until October, I'm going to choose one or maybe two more to do this fall. The problem is narrowing down the ones I like. My short list still has a dozen options on it.

It seems like such an excellent opportunity, though. Some of them could be the basis for future stories. Others would just be for fun. Regardless, I see a lot of this in my near future.