Forever in School

You guys.  I am kind of crazy but when I was on vacation I found myself flipping through Itunes University on my phone and I was kind of tripping out about some of the classes you can take. I mean sometimes it feels like I will be in school forever to finish this Master's.  But also sometimes I realize that I really probably want to be "forever in school" anyway.  I was actually a little bit sad that because of school and work I don't have time to do any of the self-directed courses available on Itunes University!

Sometimes I will hear adults say "If I could go back to school I would __________" or I would love to study "___________, but I am too old now" or "it's too late for that but I would have loved to major in _____________".  You guys.  This is a very sad thing to say!  Life is short and yet you have a lot of TIME.  There are some things you have to do in life, and some things you should do, but we should also always make some time for the things you want to learn or study or learn to do.  It's honestly never never too late.  Too late?  How can it be too late?  Are you still alive?  Then it's not too late. (and look at me, good grief, I'll be almost 50 before I have that Master's in hand...that could seem discouraging.  Sometimes for a moment it is discouraging. But I'm honestly just grateful I've figured out a way to do it at all).

Seriously look at these classes you could be taking:

Yale teaches a course you can take called "The American Novel Since 1945". (I mean who does not want to take this class?  I downloaded the curriculum just because, you know EVENTUALLY I'm going to do this.  It even appeals to me to write the papers even though I'm not actually going to be turning them in.)

There is whole course through Yale on The Great Gatsby

Stanford University teaches a course on film studies.

Stanford also teaches a whole course on the 2012 election cycle

A course that UC Berkeley teaches called "Psych 107, Social Welfare" with subtopics of "sleep, dreams and death", "emotion, demons, stress and action", "enlightened society - shambhala".

UC Berkeley course called Anthropology 114 with lectures on cultural materialism and symbolic anthropologies as well as social systems.

Harvard has a course on Justice

Harvard has a course on The Hebrew Scriptures

University of Virginia has a lecture series on architecture

University of Virginia has a class on Virginia Woolf


I mean those are just a few of the things that interest me - if math, science, philosophy or computers are more up your jam, there is something there for you as well!


I guess my point is that even if you didn't get to go to school on a campus that looks like this:

(isn't this beautiful - University of Virginia Rotunda)

You can still fill your brain up with some of the information these fine institutions have to offer.  

As difficult as school is sometimes, I love it when I learn things I didn't know before, I love the idea that we are limitless in the amount of information we can gain.  Isn't that one of the best things about being alive?