I awoke at 4:00 a.m. and was not tired at all. I laid in bed thinking about my options; reading a book, trying to go back to sleep, watching television, etc. I had already spent a lot of time recently reading a book, and I wasn't in the mood for it. That was out. I would have tried to go to sleep, but I was wide awake (most likely caused by the Pizza Pie Cafe run a few hours earlier). Overly enthusiastic salespeople and infomercials didn't sound appealing, so television didn't make the cut either. Fortunately, I had recently signed up for an online course about the basics of computer science.
Udacity offers educational courses free of charge. There are grades, but they don't go on any transcript. There are assignments, but they have little value other than your education. Isn't that great? Education for the sake of education! I get to learn about things that interest me for no cost and no assignment deadlines; perfect price and my own pace.
Unfortunately, I have spent the last few years of my life paying a lot of money for a piece of paper that says I completed the coursework, but doesn't gauge how much I learned. With Udacity, there are no real commitments. The measure of the things I learn in the course can be seen in what I do with the knowledge after the course ends. (Speaking of things I do with knowledge, I'm working on a project called Lexicity with the eldest Gessell brother. Really cool what he and I have done with no programming experience.)
At 4:00 a.m. I began my first Udacity course: Computer Science 101. A professor from the University of Virginia introduced me to the programming language and what it can be used for, and what it will be used for in the course. It was fantastic. Udacity currently offers computer science courses, and I don't know what their plans are to expand into other fields. However, Coursera has recently started offering courses in many fields, also free of charge. Open education is becoming very popular. It's becoming very easy to gain knowledge from top professors and practitioners throughout the world. All you need is an internet connection. The technology to do it has been around for a long time, but it's finally taking off.
The time is now 5:13 a.m. I went to class at 4:00 a.m. this morning, and wrote about my experience for the last twenty minutes or so. In a couple hours I will be sitting in a classroom (what will I do until then?) learning about things that don't matter much to me at this point. All for one sheet of paper that will end up sitting in my closet somewhere. The real game-changer will be when somebody can figure out a way to offer one of those pieces of paper for free. There's a million dollar idea. You're welcome.