City Lit (and adult education courses in general)

I've just signed up for my first City Lit course. On "mystical and historical London" (they have a mythology and folklore dept, I think I love them)

What should I expect?

Also, a thread to just generally talk about adult education type courses - the "for funs" ones about, like, basket weaving and Byzanine iconry rather than the ones you have to take for work or whatevs. As I've searched and cannot find one.

There is actually a Byzantine Icony class! I'm very tempted to sign up. But it has to wait until after my next paycheck.

I've always wanted to take a course at the Newberry Library.

My whole life, the idea has been shoved down my throat that education is something that you do to either make yourself more employable or to advance to a next level step of education that will make you more employable.

I am looking forward to taking courses where the whole point is just to Learn! Random! Cool! Stuff! because you're interested in it, and nothing more.

Are their art courses any good? Two of my friends have either taken or are about to take their jewelery courses, but I would like to do something like figure drawing or textile design (dammit, if they have a Drawing Paisley For Beginners, I'd love to take it - except, heck, I could probably teach it.)

that looks cool jaymc! i want to do stuff like this eventually so i can learn how to make textiles and how to weld. haha.

I want to take classes at the Newberry Library, too! Specifically Medieval Britain through Historical Fiction, 1307-1485.

I was considering signing up for an evening class or two but am kind of dismayed to find that they're over a hundred pounds per term, since I am probably not going to keep up with the work and then get too lazy/anxious and stop going. Teachers have to get paid, of course...

There seem to be lots of little short-term block courses with City Lit - some are only a week long. More like a seminar than a course, I guess. Which means I'd be much more likely to go. Problem is, two of the ones I really want to do are the same time. Bah.

Is Knitting course an adult course? J/K I know it isn't. But it's all ADULTS and in the EVENING. It's already the fourth year (even though I dropped out of most years like midway through.) It's pretty weird: In the meantime I got Elisabeth,... Life moves on "parallel" to these courses.

Ok, uh, you can now talk about interesting courses again.

There are knitting courses provided through continuing ed programs at community colleges around here, so I think it counts. I also think it sounds pretty interesting. I can crochet, but I have not yet learned to knit and I would like to.

Sure, knitting classes count. They do knitting at City Lit, which I did notice as I was looking at the textile design courses.

I'd love to learn to weave - but that's really out as it's another thing that kills the wrists with RSI.

Where have you been all my life?

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

The idea that I can go to a class where I sit and learn about TC Lethbridge and Alfred Watkins all day = WIN WIN WIN MADE OF WIN

Tell me not to spend £125 + the cost of 5 academic textbooks (probably more than £125 in total, right?) on a 9-week introduction to Old English when I could just get one of the books out of the library, forget to read it, and only pay £3 in late fees.

(I am already on a German course and should avoid filling any more evenings and acquiring any more homework)

My husband already regrets my decision to take those knit classes again, I fear. The teacher has... uh... she keeps making mistakes and 2 my fellow students are sometimes a NO. I come here to knit, not to be judged on my smoking. So I coem home and nagnagnag. (On top of that I have to drag my fat arse to tennis two days later.)

I am taking a German course too. I am living in Germany this year, so obviously it's not completely useless, but my workplace (and career) is entirely English-speaking and I would be able to get by for the rest of the year with what I've taught myself with audio tapes. I will probably never use it again. So really I'm just learning it for the lols. Languages are fun!

(Speaking of audio tapes, by the way, there is a lot of good stuff on iTunes U., MIT OpenCourseware, etc. Of course you miss out on the social aspect and the structure/exercises/whatevs, but if you're a commuter and find the In Our Time podcast, etc. a bit wishy-washy then these can be great.)

Awesome, via iTunes U. I can download 10 Oxford University lectures on Anglo-Saxon and not pay their dept of continuing education for much the same thing. Thank you! Also downloading some Stanford state-of-science-today podcasts to go into the directory of things I will never listen to but would like to think I'd become amazingly clever if I did

(really missing my commute now I've moved closer to work as I hardly get time to read, listen to podcasts etc at all now, though I found speech kind of hard to hear above bus engines anyway)

I need to get an iPhone so I can take my mini-Turkish courses on the bus.

No need for an iPhone, you can do that with an iPod shuffle for like £20, that's how I learnt German.

I need a new phone anyways and I do not have an iPod. I'm really looking for an excuse to get an iPhone this month.

Language tapes are not good public transport stuff ime, because you have to respond out loud, and it doesn't really stick if you just sub-vocalise it. I walked to work in a fairly quiet part of the world, where I didn't mind saying stuff fairly loud (you regularly see people singing on bikes in Oxford, lol technical theatre nerds). The walk was 15 mins each way, and the Pimsleur tape lessons were 30 minutes, so it all worked nicely.

If anyone is interested in Physics but don't have a particularly formal background, or aren't so interested in the maths side, then absolutely the course I would recommend is Physics for Future Presidents at Berkeley, which is what it sounds like: the physics (nuclear power, renewable energy, electronics, cause and effect, correlation, etc.) that an informed citizen might want to know.

Alternatively, if you want a short (~50 page) free textbook, then David Helfand's core science course for all incoming Columbia undergrads is online: http://www.fos-online.org/habitsofmind/index.html. This is a bit more generic-skill-oriented rather than a study of specific issues, but it's really, really good.

xp, haha, ok, podcasts is a pretty roundabout excuse, but go for it!

Make sure you don't end up with a bill like mine.