We
made a major step last week in our “kinder, gentler unemployment”
- we transitioned from our original unemployment to Tier 1 of the
extension. We no longer need to report in person every four weeks at
the Career Center. I will miss that a bit, because a friend from high
school works there. But it will be nice to not be locked into those
60-mile round trips. We are subject to a slight penalty – there
will be two weeks that our payment will be deducted from our total
available funds, but we won't actually receive the
payment......something to do with federal funding. Yay, politics.
(Insert extreme sarcasm here.)
Speaking
of politics, I'm soon going to schooled in the mechanics of Health
Care Reform. I have an individual health care policy that's been
grandfathered in........but the cost is rising, and I had to sign a
waiver of coverage on pre-existing conditions when I started the
policy. Once my insurance agent gets schooled in the changes and
feels like he understands them, we'll go over what might be available
that would eliminate those pre-existing conditions. I don't know
what's worse.....again, dealing with the politics....or getting older
and having to worry about these things!
I
started a new personal challenge today. I've always been disappointed
that I was only able to attend college for two years, but that's the
way life went. Now that I have time – and now that technology makes
studying online possible – I thought it was time to check into the
possibility. And guess what I found! Thanks in part to “Oprah”
magazine, I found a website that offers free online college courses –
it's called Coursera and was started by Stanford University. Perfect!
Now
I have the opportunity, in the comfort of home, to take online
courses from 53 different colleges and universities worldwide and not
worry about the cost. I checked the website out and decided to start
with a six-week course on Social Psychology. The first week's
lectures have been posted, and I spent an hour this afternoon
listening to them.
I
have a ways to go – my “sitter” couldn't really take more than
an hour, but I'm sure we'll get a bit more used to it! I'm anxious to
see how this works out. There are not grades, but I have the
possibility of earning a Certificate of Completion. Hubby says he'll
buy frames for the certificates!
I'm
hoping that the “school/learning” section of my brain isn't worn
out and dusty! I think introducing some new concepts will be
interesting. I've talked before about my small high school not having
the staff to offer a really diverse list of courses. When I went to
college, I got a two-year degree that required a very intensive
course of study that didn't allow for many courses outside that
major. So I missed participating in what I consider some of the
normal elective courses – including psychology. This course I've
signed up for isn't a clinical type of psychology study. It's more
figuring out the psychology of day-to-day life and our perceptions of
and interactions with the people we are with.
I'll
be checking out other courses offered at this site. I want to take
something offered from Stanford, just to be able to say I took a
Stanford course........same with Yale and Princeton! We'll see if I
get this pulled off or not. If it doesn't go well, I'll check to see
if they have any courses on Dr. Seuss. I should be able to handle
that, after last week with the four-year-old!
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