Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Great Courses

New Year's is a time were most people think about bettering themselves and so it makes sense that my wife and I received a catalog in the mail from The Great Courses. They had a sale going on where you could pick up 2 or 3 hundred dollar courses for less than $50. So my wife and I went through and found several classes that we thought would be interesting. We spent less than $100 and have our evenings planned for the next several months.

Every night we are home together, we watch one or two lessons from "Wonders of the National Parks." Each video lasts 30 minutes and includes all sorts of interesting facts about the National Parks in the United States. There are also some parks mentioned outside the US, like several in Mexico. We have finished the first of 5 DVD's and are thoroughly enjoying them.

I also picked up a beginning guitar course. Yes I have been playing guitar for about 2 years now and probably qualify as a solid intermediate. I learned from RockSmith but wanted to see how an instructor would teach vs. a video game. So far I have been through the first 2 30-minute lessons but have learned something from each one. It is interesting that a friend who plays the guitar gave me a warm-up exercise when I first started playing. The 2nd lesson from the DVD course gave a similar exercise. This is something I wouldn't have gotten from RockSmith. I have to confess that the course is well worth the $35 I paid for it. I just looked online and it is now $235. I need to run through a few more lessons before I can confirm if it is worth that price.

I like to learn new things and so having in-depth courses about topics I am interested in learning about is a lot of fun. Yes, I probably could just watch the Discovery channel every night. But then I am at the mercy of their programming and I don't really want to be a crab fisherman.

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