The opportunities to educate yourself are really overwhelming when you start to look for them. There's social media, blogs, free online educational courses, not-so-free online educational courses, college classes, webinars, and the list goes on... Someone pointed me towards Coursera recently. Out of all the online educational tools, this has become one of my favorite. I totally didn't overcommit myself by signing up for 8 courses in the next 3 months. If my sarcasm didn't come across there, let me point out that I did overcommit myself.
Coursera is an opportunity to take a light version of an online college class with some of the best professors at some of the best colleges. We're talking University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Harvard, Northwestern, and even some foreign institutes that sound vaguely familiar and impressive. There is no fee unless you choose to get a certificate for taking the class, which only costs around $60 last I checked. The courses range from intro to Guitar playing, to hardcore accounting, to studies on ancient art displays. I am currently taking a class on Google and it's affect on the media. I love it.
I love learning that Google and many impressive people writing about Google are preaching that I need to figure out how to do one thing, and do it well. Sadly, this only validates my frustration with myself on not being able to find that one thing.
Sigh...at least I have learned I am correct in my problem.
I will continue to take my online courses in technology, study French with Rosetta Stone, learn to code with Codeacademy.com, and wait to find out if I was accepted to graduate school at Temple Fox School of Business. Perhaps I will stumble across the brilliant idea I long for, and get a chance to do something I love. If only I could get paid to continue learning new things looking for a way to get paid to do my one thing. I'm open to suggestions on that front.
