The Great Courses

Junk mail rarely affects me. (Junk mail? You know -- the stuff that's like e-mail spam, but it comes in your mailbox, delivered by the fine men and women of the Post Office. I know it's old fashioned, but it's still there.)

Sorry, I'm getting distracted by parentheticals.

Several weeks ago, we received a piece of junk mail that caught my attention. Included in the mailing was a catalog (nothing special there) and a CD (less common, for sure, but not unique.) The catalog was titled "The Great Courses" and the CD contained samples. Something about the material caused me to put it on the table in my den, rather than throw it away.

Some time later, as I was procrastinating doing financial chores on my computer, I opened the plastic and began to look through the catalog. Hmmm. "The Great Courses" are produced by The Teaching Company, and they are essentially college classes, delivered on audio or video. These courses are purportedly taught by highly regarded professors, and they cover a large variety of subjects. The audience for them consists of people who like learning things.

"Hey!" I thought, "that's me!"

So, I decided I'd try out their sample CD. It contained two lectures - one from a course on the greatest books ever written, and one on relativity and modern physics. I put the CD in the player in my car, initially intending to listen on my way to and from work each day. That intention didn't last long, however, because the lectures were so good I had to bring them with me from my car to a CD player and finish them.

I was impressed. And intrigued. The catalog has courses in history, art, science, math, philosophy -- wow!

As I've mentioned before, I have a certain Renaissance bent. I like learning about, and talking about, and thinking about, many different topics. One of my fondest memories in college is taking the Shakespeare course during my senior year. Why? Because I could, and I was interested. I had long since satisfied all of my requirements for my majors (Math & Computer Science) as well as my "general" requirements. I just wanted to learn about Shakespeare and his works.

Now here was The Teaching Company, offering to give me the chance to consume very similar material. What a great idea!

The catalog indicated that I needed to decide by mid-January in order to take advantage of huge deals on their courses, so I went to the website and browsed. It was so hard to choose, but ultimately, I selected the two courses from which the samples had been selected (Books That Have Made History... and Einstein's Relativity and the Quantum Revolution...) as well as a course on Science and Religion.

Each course comprises a series of 30-45 minute lectures, and I believe the shortest of the three I purchased has 12 lectures, and the longest has 36. I have been listening to the Relativity course first, and have completed 8 of the 24, and I am delighted.^[1] I have already grasped the basics of "relativity" and am intrigued to hear the explanations behind how this leads to time and space being inconstant. It's great. Each lecture teaches me something, and leaves me wanting more.

It will take me a while to get through these three courses. But when I do, I will definitely be looking for others. There is a course on Dark Matter that I would love to take -- especially since I started working on that science fiction story around dark matter. And maybe I can finally have a business or economics course intrigue me. Yes, I'll wait for a good price, but since some set of courses always seems to be on sale, I'm sure I can find something. These are an excellent use of my time -- I'm learning and enjoying every minute of it.


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^[1] By the time this entry is published, I may be even farther along than that - it's the result of writing entries ahead of time. (That has nothing to do with "relativity" by the way.)