Or, you know, for however long you want.

One of the things we forget when we’re using our computers and phones to tweet and facebook and skype and look at lolcats and YouTube videos is what an incredible educational resource we have now.

Just last week, somebody shared a link to 650 Free Online Courses, and I got a little ambitious.

Right now, I’m taking a course in Computer Science and Programming from MIT, Astronomy from Penn State, Shakespeare from UC Berkeley, Real Estate Finance from Columbia, Marketing from Texas A&M and Chinese from Cambridge—and I don’t have to leave my living room.  I don’t even have to leave my pajamas.

Granted, I’m not going to get course credit or a diploma from any of this, but I’m going to learn some things.  There’s another 600 plus courses to go when I finish these.  And that’s not even counting the online resources of software tutorials, websites on how to crochet or knit or play guitar or lay brick.  Plus, you can find DIY info on almost anything you need.  (I once saved $150 bucks by repairing a DVD recorder myself with the help of an online forum, a $15 soldering iron, and $5 worth of capacitors.  I was amazed the thing didn’t blow up!  But it worked for another five years, and I’m going to try to repair it again as soon as I figure out which capacitors have blown this time.)

My point here is that there’s a miracle here.  Maybe not quite the full sum of human knowledge, but an awful lot of it is available 24 hours a day.  A little initiative, a little discipline, and you could design yourself the most amazing Independent Studies curriculum in all of history.

We are rapidly approaching the point, if we haven’t already passed it, when we have absolutely no excuses for not stretching our brains and our skills.  Our worlds are bigger than they have ever been.

Have a ball!