A toe in the water
Right now, I feel like an old (sleepy) dog, trying to learn new tricks. What I really want to do is roll over and snooze, but I’m too proud to give in. You see, sometime last fall, I filled in an online survey form dealing with online learning. Without thinking things through, I committed to “taking an online course”, just because. No fees, no recognition. Learning for the sake of learning.
When the email message came in, early last week, announcing that my chosen course had begun… I’m not sure how I felt. After all, I’ve spent the majority of my life trying to learn, so I was receptive. Logged into the site, and discovered that this course has a timeframe. Four weeks. On Friday, I’m supposed to be ready for the “mid term exam”. And I’m still two hours short on the video lecture count.
Back when my declared profession was “student”, I knew how to schedule my life around that fifteen hours of classtime (full load). Even managed to create schedules with empty afternoons or quiet mornings. Fast forward to 2013, where my day is already scheduled (by someone else). Ditto for the night slot. I’m racing to fit in my required “presence” in “class”. AND I’m not looking forward to exam time. I’ve found others (online) that are asking for extensions, given that life on the outside is different from the calm mood of a traditional campus.
The course material interests me, because it deals with sound production. One lecture, on the work of R. Murray Schafer, is a nod to a course I followed back in 1971. And after the latest lecture, those knobs on my mixer board are less mysterious. A plus.
Am I ready to go back to school? Not yet. Let’s just do the “toe in the water” thing for now.
