For me, the ends of education is to learn – get new opportunities or at least exercise your brain; the degree is secondary (though I do seek a PhD eventually.. just my BS suits me just fine for now). So for me, MIT’s opencourse initiative is perfect! You can take classes from MIT for free! But.. sans the instructor (oh, but this course has videos, so it’s like he’s right there on my iPod mini). That’s where PhD friends and relatives come in handy, heh.

Anyway, I made this spreadsheet for myself for Biology 7.014, which is the basic Biology course for Biology majors. Just go down the list, and do the assignments and watch the lectures.. Then, try to discover something yourself..

Biology 7.014 Syllabus (.ods)
Biology 7.014 Syllabus (.pdf)
Biology 7.014 Syllabus (.xls)

(And no, it hasn’t escaped me that the file extension for Opendocument Spreadsheet looks like “odious”)

Here’s the course itself. I can’t believe no one else is taking advantage of this!!

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Biology/7-014Spring-2005/CourseHome/index.htm