I had a really cool discovery this week--iTunes has university classes and lectures available for free! I love learning new things and have a wide variety of interests, but I don't have time to indulge them by going back to college, and to be honest, I'm way too lazy to return to homework and papers. Been there, done that.
These university classes, though, seem like an ideal way to get the education without spending the money, taking a test, or worrying about school deadlines. Heck, I have enough writing deadlines to worry about. I already have a degree, so it's not like I'm looking for the credits from attending anyway. I already downloaded a class on the Roman Empire. I can't listen to it right now, but it's on my iMac, waiting for me.
The other cool thing is that I can hear lectures from universities I never considered attending--Yale, Stanford, UC Berkley, to name a few.
Okay, I'm sounding like a commercial. I don't mean to, especially since I haven't listened to a single file yet, but I didn't know this existed, so I thought maybe others didn't either. One of the really cool things I noticed is that they have lectures on topics I could use for research. Some of them actually touch on components that are in synopses that I've already written, but haven't sold yet. See? It is a writing topic. ;-)
One drawback, I think, is that if you don't have an iPod (and I don't), you have to listen to it on the computer. Since I have a really hard time staying tethered that long unless I'm writing, I don't know how that's going to work out for me. I guess I'll see once I have some free time again.
