Empty Returns on Big Goals

My pretty green backpack is empty and the textbook rentals are ready to be returned.  This semester has been seriously stressful and seriously awesome, at the same time.  My last final was on Wednesday and yesterday I turned in the final draft of my paper on fracking.  That signaled the end of my semester.

That means it's time for my summer goals.  I canceled our Netflix DVD subscription yesterday so that I could use that money for an online gym subscription.  Everything I'll need for success in fitness and weight control will all be in one place.  All I'll need to do is show up and do the work.  The structure of college has been good for me, so I want that elsewhere in my life, too.  I'm still developing time management skills and goal setting skills, so it's helpful to me to have someone else to have done some of that work for me already.  In the process of working towards my dreams, I'm also helping out someone else with theirs.  So, really, it's a win-win all around.

I've also signed up for a few free MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) on Coursera.  The ones I'm most interested in and will devote my time to are Introduction to Human Behavioral Genetics, Preventing Chronic Pain, and Our Energy Future.  My interest in these is personal.  I'm in college, working towards a degree in psychology, so it interests me to know why people do the things they do.  I deal with chronic pain on a daily basis due to injury I obtained working all those years at Kohl's department store.  And I just finished up an argumentative research paper on fracking for my English 102 composition class and have developed an intense interest in the world's energy usage.

On top of all of that, I have decided to start into, what will probably at least a 10 year process, of reading and studying The Great Books.  I'm starting with the Gateway books, to get my feet wet.  I do not own any of the sets, so I'll just be following the schedule online through the blog of Dr. J, who is currently into his 4th year of his study, and getting the readings either online or through the library.  I started last night and have read through the first 3 of the 6 readings for the week.  If you'd like to join in, too, it would be fun to have someone to discuss things with.  Week 1 starts here.  I'll try to make individual posts on my weekly readings.  So I guess I should take notes.

Somewhere in here I also want to get back to Frank's School.  I love his teaching style and he's a really interesting guy.  He started his teaching on YouTube with the humanities class he used to teach in school and is now in his 3rd year, on YouTube, of teaching further humanities studies.

I have lots of plans for summer.  It will take some refining of time management skills to fit it all in.