When I was a college student, the courses I always felt I learned the most from, took the most away from, and enjoyed the most while I was in them were the lab courses: chemistry, physics, biology, anatomy, etc. Witnessing the tangible proof of the information the professors and the books had been spewing set that knowledge solidly into my grey matter.

Non-lab courses always seemed to me as if I read gallons of information, sat through endless talking-only lectures, and I had to just take everyone’s word for everything. The math courses were somewhere in the middle of those two extremes; no actual lab work, but everything was provable. Plus, once I understood how to do the problem in question, it was incredibly satisfying on some deep-seated, wing-nut level in my brain to sit for hours and obsessively solve equations. I’m such a freak—it’s making me all warm and zennish and deeply calm just thinking about calculus, trig and algebra. Does math affect everyone else that way or does it just do that to me?

As part of MIT’s OpenCourseWare site, anyone can access course materials from pretty much every undergraduate and graduate course taught at MIT (there are currently 1800 of them available). It’s free and it kicks ass and physics geeks like me can watch Professor Walter Lewin’s totally entertaining lectures/circus performances.

If physics isn’t your thing, here’s a list of all the other courses with audio/video components.

Here are the courses geared toward high school students and teachers, including AP biology, calculus and physics.

Here’s the course list in its entirety. Dang. It just makes you want to learn shit for the rest of your life. It’s a total time-suck and you can do it all in the name of education.

Posted by Alexa Harrington