Friday, September 25, 2020

Mid-Terms

This is a brief update on this self study experiment.

I am now even further behind my schedule, again because of some unexpected, mostly good, disruptions. It is nothing like the disruption of a friend of mine, when years ago his mother died suddenly during his first week of law school. That set him behind and the law school did not pause to wait for him to come back. Nevertheless, he gradually caught up and performed extremely well in the end. My program can pause, however, and I  am working on a revised syllabus to keep on track. An advantage of do-it-yourself study is being able to change the program to fit my reality.

Meanwhile, new questions and some tentative answers have come up. 

Grading. I had an idea of grading myself based on how much (percentage) of the reading I do for each class and how many classes I complete. But I also need an accessible system and location to track my grading. 

Exams. The Coursera on-line philosophy class includes exams, which is helpful, if overly easy. Alternatively, I can do mid-term and final written papers instead of exams. That makes me look forward to writing papers about Shakespeare and Philosophy. It is strange to be looking forward to this homework, but I won't knock it. For the craft of writing class, I am already doing summaries of the works I am reading and writing exercises, so I don't really need to add to that.