An Eternal Student

The serpent’s record in seeking out new knowledge has been abysmal of late. I ended up abandoning a fascinating course about terrorism and counterterrorism due to that detour to Amsterdam in December. I figured I learned my lesson and should stay away from online courses until the old grey cells were back in working order.

They seemed to have turned to total mush during that overseas adventure from the very first days. Balancing the books at the end of a day’s spending proved far too taxing for this old grey serpent brain as did adding up the scores for our regular games of Scrabble. It was like the numbers kept slipping through a sieve. I just could not hold them in my head.
Such a contrast from the games at the day centre where I would keep a running total of the score and be in agreement with the official calculator version more than 90% of the time.

I had decided to start with baby steps with the online courses and chose a computer programming course based on Scratch which is designed for kindergarten kids as well as another on Crypto more for nostalgia sake than anything.
It seems most courses these days are big on video lectures. I must say I prefer good old fashioned slides since they don’t nuke my meagre 4gb monthly ration and they are so much quicker to get through.
Downloading a video is a bit like buying a book. When you get in from a library the 3 week deadline increases the likelihood of actually reading it. Buying gives the sense of having all the time in the world.
So it did not take long to rapidly fall behind. No point in downloading a whole pile of videos if you don’t get around to actually watching them.

( Too many tasty temptations )

An Eternal Student

The serpent’s record in seeking out new knowledge has been abysmal of late. I ended up abandoning a fascinating course about terrorism and counterterrorism due to that detour to Amsterdam in December. I figured I learned my lesson and should stay away from online courses until the old grey cells were back in working order.

They seemed to have turned to total mush during that overseas adventure from the very first days. Balancing the books at the end of a day’s spending proved far too taxing for this old grey serpent brain as did adding up the scores for our regular games of Scrabble. It was like the numbers kept slipping through a sieve. I just could not hold them in my head.
Such a contrast from the games at the day centre where I would keep a running total of the score and be in agreement with the official calculator version more than 90% of the time.

I had decided to start with baby steps with the online courses and chose a computer programming course based on Scratch which is designed for kindergarten kids as well as another on Crypto more for nostalgia sake than anything.
It seems most courses these days are big on video lectures. I must say I prefer good old fashioned slides since they don’t nuke my meagre 4gb monthly ration and they are so much quicker to get through.
Downloading a video is a bit like buying a book. When you get in from a library the 3 week deadline increases the likelihood of actually reading it. Buying gives the sense of having all the time in the world.
So it did not take long to rapidly fall behind. No point in downloading a whole pile of videos if you don’t get around to actually watching them.

( Too many tasty temptations )