Online study

I’d guess it’s almost certain that Greek mythology gets some attention at least a couple of times during our school years and I was no exception. I don’t really recall at what stages we covered it but it was visited on several occasions while growing up. I remember in college we read  the Odyssey during our Western Civ class, although I’m not certain if it was the full thing or just a part of it. I do remember it was hard to read and I didn’t get a lot out of it. The prose stories seemed okay to me but reading the verse was a different story.

I’m currently doing a course on Greek and Roman mythology on Coursera and reading the Odyssey again, in verse. It’s a far different experience to come to it out of my own choice. The translation by Fagles is the one used in the class so I am using that too. It seems to work for me as I’ve been able to read it quite well so far. I still haven’t go into the major part of the story but I am remembering more of what I read this time around. There are some other texts being used that I probably haven’t read before from the source, like Metamorphosis by Ovid. That’s still a few weeks away but I hope I can be as comfortable with the translation there as I am with this one.

Lego Lover is also doing the course with me, although he is more auditing it than anything and mostly watching the videos and doing some of the readings. The pace is a bit fast for him so we may have to do it outside the time frame of the online class. I think the class archive stays up for quite some time so that should be quite doable for him.

I’m now mostly limiting myself to just one online course at a time as it gets a bit too difficult to do more than one and get much out of it. Earlier this year I was signed up for several and only completed one of them so fewer commitments is obviously better.

Later this year I’m doing a philosophy of science course through the University of Edinburgh. I did the beginning philosophy course last year and enjoyed it and hope this delves further into the topics of a couple of the presenters for that class.