Reflections on Online Learning

I mentioned previously that I have recently moved to Silicon Valley in California as my husband is a software engineer and is working in the hub of the tech world. While I wait out the wait for a green card, I thought I would beef up my brain and take some courses online. This past semester I have taken my first two graduate level online courses and I’ve learned some things along the way. Maybe I’m alone in these, or maybe my experiences are reflective of others’ - but to illustrate, I have compiled a list of pros and cons for taking online courses:

Pro: You can work at your own speed.

Con: All of a sudden it’s the deadline for a month’s worth of work and “working at your own speed” means working at warp speed. 

Pro: You can live anywhere.

Con: Living anywhere means sometimes you have to be awake at ungodly hours to attend a live review session.

Pro: You can speed up or slow down the lecture videos (You can! I discovered  this featured this semester…you just press the little gear/flower-like thing in the bottom right corner and select your playback speed!)

Con: It is really tempting to speed up every lecture video regardless of how poorly you understand the material and whether you can actually take notes at chipmunk heartbeat speed.

Pro: You can think a little longer about how you’re going to respond to the class discussion instead of blurting something out just to get participation marks.

Con: Your well-thought out response takes 1) forever to craft 2) lives for eternity on the the discussion forum, so depending on how long “forever” is for you, you may look like you blurted it out anyways and no one will ever forget it.


Pro: You don’t have to make small talk with your classmates before and after class.

Con: You begin to feel very isolated having not spoken to anyone in real-time for days - refreshing the forums to see if anyone has read your brilliant prose and responded.

Pro: You don’t have to get dressed…or even get out of bed to attend a lecture.

Con: You begin to question whether you are developing agoraphobia from never leaving the house.

Pro: You can finish an entire degree while working full-time.

Con: You haven’t slept or seen a movie in 5 years.