Recently I’ve been wanting to start something new during my free time. I didn’t want to be under pressure, but I want to grow as a human. And I found out about free college courses one can take. This is very cool. I learned about it at the end of last year, and today I got serious about it and enrolled on EdEx.

Those who know me know I’m a bit obsessed with weather. I have three weather apps on my phone, and I track 3-5 locations at any given time. One of the great delights in my world is tracking whichever new weather front is heading my way (yes, Maya is hitting us tomorrow).

I know, I know. To each their own, right?

So I dove into my new adventure with full intentions of signing up for a course on weather. But a very important criteria for me is to take a course at my own pace. No pressure. This is my idea of constructive leisure, after all. And the only weather courses were ones on global environment or tornadoes. Neither of which totally appealed to me. So I branched out.

It was an interesting process — reading through courses and realizing what appealed to me. There were many computer coding offerings I was tempted by, but reminded myself this is for my leisure, and I want something quite different from my work. I looked into neuroscience and nanotechnology — all great stuff! And I might do those in the future. But then I found a course that is currently calling my name. It’s called:

The World History of Modern Wine

Oooooh, yeah. Wine is my definite vice of choice, and thanks to my Uncle John, I have a fascination for history. This is the description for the course:

This course explores the growth of global wine production and trade over the past three centuries. You will explore key themes in wine history and learn about the methods and resources that historians use to understand the past.

The course is designed for both wine-lovers who want to know more about their favorite beverage, and for history-lovers who are curious about the growing field of commodity history.

Topics include the differences between the “old” and “new” worlds of wine, the changing nature of taste, and innovations in wine quality. We’ll discuss the historical development of appellation systems to classify wine, as well as the importance of global trade in creating the world’s distinctive wine regions.

https://www.edx.org/course/the-history-of-modern-wine

Is that perfect, or what? I was torn between diving in and blogging about it. You all in the blogoshpere won, and I hope some of you will be excited about courses you can take as well — I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Now I’m off to learn for an hour before I head back to work. I so love this technological era we live in where all this great info is at our fingertips. What a gift!