I was born into a family of scholars. Both of my parents have PhDs and even despite their age, they have not lost their intellectual curiosity.  To put this in perspective, my father who is 62 years old went back to school to get his MBA at the tender age of 55 even though he already had two Master degrees and a PhD.

In my intellectual curiosity, I am very much my father’s daughter.

I love to learn and of my 32 years of life, I’ve spent about 27 as a student. Being a student is something I am good at and that allows me to make sense of the world around me.  It also provides me with the opportunity to engage with people who share my curiosity and exposes me to different viewpoints.

After I completed my MBA 2 years ago, I tried to fill the subsequent void by reading anything and everything I could get my hands on. The problem with reading “anything and everything” is that there is a lot of crap out there.  One of the many reasons why teachers/ professors are so valuable is that they know how to curate educational information and they also know how to organize it in a way that makes sense.

Lately, I’ve felt the urge to go back to school again.  But more than going back to school,  I feel like I want to learn new things and be held accountable for learning them. It is in this spirit that I have started doing classwork for 2 anthropology courses on the  MITOpenCourseware.

The course content offered on the MIT OpenCourseware is non-credit but it is completely free. It reminds you of how fun it is to be in a classroom, but it has a flexibility not possible in a traditional classroom.  It is structured, and what’s more, the course material reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT.

Not a bad deal for someone who just wants to learn.

Education in America is really expensive.  For those of us out there who have a thirst for knowledge but don’t necessarily need/want degrees, this is a really good alternative.  Harvard also offers some courses as part of their Open Learning Initiative and through EdX, MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley offer free classes online that will earn you a certificate upon demonstrated mastery of a subject.

Go take a look. Knowledge is power.