Coursera – A brilliant initiative.

My final exams ended on May 15 and since then I’ve been at the peak of joblessness. Since then, I’ve generally had about 14-15 hours a day to kill. I wouldn’t say that I have been absolutely unproductive. I have been blogging everyday, catching up with my extensive list of yet-to-be-seen movies, and spending quality time with family and friends. But yesterday, one of my really good friends, Aishwarya (seems strange to call her Aishwarya, her nickname is YP) introduced me to the website www.courseera.org.

I think that this is a brilliant initiative. Back in high school, I studied under the CBSE system of education. In my school the subjects offered were very limited. There were two division of streams – Science and Commerce. Science had two options – Computer Science or Biology, along with Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and English. Commerce had three options – Math or IT or Sociology, with Accountancy, Business Studies, Economics and English. So I had to pick Math, English, Computer Science, Chemistry and Physics as my 5 core subjects because I loved Math and wanted to learn Computer Science. Since I didn’t have much of a choice and wasn’t aware about different education systems, I was okay with the choice I had picked. But after I went to the US to study, I learnt how the US, UK and some other education systems worked. I met people who had taken up Business Studies with Physics and Psychology and I thought of how unlucky I was to not have been able to pick and select subjects as per my interests. And since then, I urged my parents to transfer my sister to a different school. My sister has always been more creatively inclined and less academic inclined. So she moved to the UK system where she started studying Math with Art, Business Studies, IT, Accounting and English. I always thought that I had a particular interest and aptitude in Math and wished that I had studied Business or Accountancy in high school. And until yesterday, it was always an afterthought that someday I would teach myself both these subjects.

Enters into frame coursera. It is an online portal where Professors from some of the better universities in the world offer courses free of cost to those willing to learn. The courses offered are like most courses that are offered by different universities in their distance learning programs, except that these ones are for free. They are framed just like university courses with regular assignments from time to time, video lectures from the Professors and a certificate on successful completion of the course. If you want a free certificate, then it is generally provided by coursera itself, and if you are willing to pay a certain fee (ranges between $39-$79), you get a certificate from the University. Both certificates is signed by the course instructor. The one provided for free is from the coursera website, and the one that is paid is attested by the University employing the lecturer.

I am super, super excited to have come across this. For CS students, the number of course offerings are large and extremely interesting. But now I have no regrets for not having been able to study Business and Accountancy in high school. Just today, I signed up for an Introduction to Finance class and can’t wait for it to begin in 4 days. I will also be signing up for a few other courses as and when time permits. The best part about it is that you get to learn. If you find yourself short of time, you can work at your own pace. Of course that means that you will miss out on the submission dates and won’t get that certificate, but hey, this was purely about learning and gaining knowledge right, anything else is just an added bonus.

I would HIGHLY recommend signing up for coursera. I know that at this point I may sound like a brand ambassador of sorts, but really, I think an initiative like this is the need of our generation wherein people who can’t afford to pay fancy tuition fees don’t have to compromise as far as enhancing knowledge is concerned. For people like me that don’t have anything to do over the summer, taking up one or more course(s) is the best way of time utilization. I like to have fun too, but I’m sure that instead of being carefree and unoccupied for 14 hours a day, I can most certainly adjust to being carefree and unoccupied for 10-12 hours a day.

Compliments and I do not go hand in hand.

We all love compliments. Compliments brighten up our day. Whether it be the outfit we are wearing, the food that we’ve cooked, the work that we’ve done or the impression we have created, we all like to be appreciated for our gestures. I think it is important to hand out compliments and not be stingy when it comes to that.

But compliments and I share a nasty and complicated relationship. The other day, a friend said something really really nice to me. I loved that she said what she did, but as always I didn’t know how to respond. I start behaving weirdly, start blushing and I also start avoiding the conversation that would persist after the compliment was handed. I tend to smile and let it pass or let there be some awkward silence. People possibly misunderstand this as rudeness or ego. Whereas actually, it is shyness.

I love complimenting people. I do it so often in my head. I would always be thinking that oh this person dresses really well, or oh this person has beautiful eyes, or oh this person has worked so hard on this project or oh this person is such a good cook. But when it comes to actually telling people how I feel about a certain deed of theirs, I tend to shy away. I always express it in some way or the other though. If I like you, it is hard for me to tell you that because I always fear negative reception. So I’ll go out of my way to show my love and warmth towards you. If I see your picture, quite often I want to let you know that you look really good in whatever you’re wearing, but I won’t be able to. So I’ll just go ahead and ‘like’ your picture hoping that you understand.

A new trend that has overtaken Facebook is the “compliments/confessions” pages. Most school and universities have a compliments/confessions page. Being a shy person, I LOVE the idea. I think it is cool to let someone know that they are appreciated without the fear of negative reception. But since people consider themselves to be such geniuses and ‘troll-ers’, everybody started misusing such pages and started writing untrue confessions and non heartfelt compliments. It breaks my heart to see that my compliment to a girl was ignored by her because she thought that someone was misusing the forum again. I hate people who think they’re overly smart. I wish we could be allowed to punch these people hard in the face. There should probably be some sort of rule that allows every person one punch a day, or 10 punches a month or similar.

Now all of you that are reading this might consider me to be a coward, but so be it. The truth is that in today’s day and age, if a boy likes something about a girl, he is always afraid of saying it openly for the fear of misinterpretation. I know that this trait of mine isn’t a good thing and I’ve been working towards changing myself. For the last month, I’ve been trying to be bold and have been handing out one compliment to a person every day. That person could be a best friend or a random stranger that I meet on the streets. I’ve also decided to speak out problems. I used to forgive and forget and move on in case of a situation or fight. But recently, I’ve started telling myself that time only worsens situations and it is much better to clear them when they happen to avoid unnecessary complications later.

Hopefully you guys don’t shy away from situations and compliments. And even if you do, pluck a leaf from my book, it is never ever too late! I’ve been contemplating over a lot of things today, but I’ll leave those for other days and other posts.

Also, I love all of you that do read these posts. It feels like someone else shares my life stories with me.