I also remember that it
was incredibly pricey and since I’ve lived on my own, I haven’t found the state
fairs to be worth my dollar.
I have amazingly
generous friends who not only offered to give me a ride there (so I didn’t have
to worry about gas or parking costs), but offered to pay my ticket (which also
doesn’t come cheap.) I felt guilty about
taking advantage of their friendship (though not enough to say “no” because
that’s the kind of person I am) but in the end, they only had to worry about
the ride. When we got to the ticket,
right before we got up to pay, a young girl (about high school age, if I had to
guess) came back saying she and her friends had an extra ticket and asked if we
would like one.
You have to love those
little gifts in life. This kid wasn’t
prompted by any reason other than good will; and finding myself surrounded by
good friends and random acts of kindness from strangers, I have a lot more
faith in humanity and the future than is perhaps sane, but there you go.
***
WalMart has a pretty
cool selection of scented candles. Why
was I going through scented candles? As
spotless as I keep my floor, you can tell that my bedroom is a guy’s room. Some mornings, I forget to take out the trash
or I should have done the laundry sooner, but whatever the case is, it could
smell better in there.
For only $5, I was able
to get a huge honking container of Hazelnut Cream, which is not too sweet yet
still makes me hungry. It’s just right.
***
Last year, I did a post
on TedTalks, and at the time I mentioned how I enjoyed the variety and ideas
that they promoted. And considering the
short length of each, I was just enough to get an idea of what’s going on in
our world. I still stand by that, but I
must confess that nearly a month after I wrote that blog, I stopped watching
them.
It’s not that I find it
any less valuable; I just got bored. For
me, the great thing about education is that it’s a two-way discussion between
teacher and student, or speaker and audience.
I’m not only interested in what I’m being told but also in what I can
personally contribute.
TedTalks are a one-way
street. When they weren’t advertising a
specific product or idea, I just felt like I was only being talked at.
One of the reasons I
love the Khan Academy is that not only do I watch videos, but there exercises
that I can use for practicing the skills that are taught, but there are
discussion forums for each individual topic, if I so choose.
But onto stuff that’s
also free, I have learned about EdX, and what’s available there is
stunning. www.edx.org is a site featuring classes from MIT, Harvard,
Wellesley, and a couple other prestigious universities, all for free.
I’ve done online
courses before—in fact, they made up half of the total classes I took when I
went to college. I’m very familiar with
the teaching style and I’m motivated enough to make it work.
The best part for me
are the lectures. Not only do I get to
watch videos from some of the best teachers, and I can also write what they’re
saying on my steno machine and get extra practice there as well. When I told my mom this, she summed it up
beautifully, “You’re getting an education on top of your education.”
I’m currently taking a
Justice class and an Ancient Greek Heroes class, both from Harvard. I started too late to get any sort of certificate
of mastery from these classes, but I still get to watch the lectures, read the
material, and participate in the
discussion forums. For me, this is a
straight win all around. So happy that
this was made available. And thank you
to The Colbert Report for bringing
this to my attention. This was by far
the coolest thing that show has ever done for me.
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