Just before I left for Seville last month, they announced (finally!) the first final exams at Peterson Academy. This feature had been locked ever since their initial launch last August, which did cause some irritation (understandably). I admit I felt a little panicked when I saw the announcement. Some of the courses I'd taken all the way back then, and to be honest, I haven't sat an exam in years. I'm quite confident in my intelligence, but when it comes to formalities and academia, not so much.
Still, being the impatient person that I am, I launched into the first exam for a course I'd already finished (W. Keith Campbell's On Narcissism) blind, with no review and without going over my notes really. I wanted to see what to expect from them and how well I could do. Overall, I was very pleased with my 88% grade, and overall 91.5% on the course (they also factor in your grades for each lesson's test).
However, I'd gone with it because it was a course I'd enjoyed and felt fairly comfortable with. What about the ones I'd considered hard?
Well, I've spent the past two weeks pretty much blazing through them, a mix of reviewing the courses I've already finished, as well as hitting the other ones with exams available, with one left to review and pass (hopefully) tomorrow.
It's not all available courses, many still don't have exams unlocked.
Can you fail? Apparently so. I've heard of several peers who did fail, some who went in blind like me and overestimated their ability. But that's good, in a way. One of the things I really enjoy about PA is that it doesn't throw out these overly easy questions just to mimic examination. They really come at you. Thank goodness for that. So I don't know exactly what happens when you fail, if they let you try again or no. I assume so.
What's it like? Well, it's been a while since I've had to properly sit and concentrate, uninterrupted, timed, etc. Do an exam. But for the most part, they've been great experiences. They really gave the classes a sense of completion, which is satisfying.
Some of the classes, I decided to blaze through. There'd been one I'd been putting off since I started, Dr. Balland Jalal's Intro to Neuroscience. Me and science don't really mix, I thought. Add neuro- to it, I'm outie. But it was on the list of exam courses, so I figured let's get this over with. What a fantastic experience. I got through it in two days, my hand was sore from all the note-taking and so was my brain, but it was such a great class. Dr. Jalal is a fantastic, very cool teacher who makes it seem like you're talking about easy stuff. It ended up being my best exam score (max) and overall course grade (97.5%).
Weird how that happens sometimes - the things you dread most end up going the best, while the ones you expect to go well (such as psychology) end up being harder in some ways.
So I've been immersed in studying lately and I'm in love with it. There's no words for it. All the classes are so high-quality and there's this lingering desire for knowledge everywhere you look. There's taking pleasure in knowing more. There's hearing a teacher in a class mention a concept or a figure and saying oh yeah, I know that.
It all just seems to flow from one subject into the other - economics, philosophy, even science.
And I don't know if that's how American higher education is supposed to be. Here, in Romania and I believe Europe in general, it's more specialized. You pick what you're gonna be, then study only stuff related to that in university. But with PA, there's such a broadness of different subject and areas. I did a fantastic course on biology with Dr. Benjamin Bikman, called Why We Get Sick (all about insulin resistance, something we don't much talk about, alarmingly), and it was brilliant. Then philosophy, then history, then onwards and onwards.
I love it. I feel so fortunate to be here, to have access to all this incredible stuff. To be able to grow. It feels silly sometimes. Because it's online. Because it's this highly controversial figure. Because I'm 26 and it sounds weird. But every day, I feel like I'm getting more towards who I would like to be and broadening my horizons and it's elating as all get-out.
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