MasterClass online Education Platform

 For Christmas my kids and I have whittled down our lists of things we want as gifts because we are all old enough to get what we want and need when we want and need it. So gift giving is more joyful and funny and there isn't a lot of stress involved because we try and give experiences, not tangible goods. For example, we give gift certificates to restaurants or to local theater or towards an overnight out-of-town adventure. (We also give things like dish towels and good chocolate and boxes of pasta, so there are real gifts to unwrap.)

This year my big gift was a year's subscription to MasterClass.  You might have heard about it.... it's been around for a few years and is basically a series of classes curated by amazingly talented people in more than a dozen disciplines: art, music, science, technology, food, journalism, health, home and garden, business, writing, history.....  and so many more. The experts giving the classes are world famous in their specific fields. People like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Margaret Atwood, Martin Scorsese, Thomas Keller, Joyce Carol Oates, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and the list goes on and on. There are at least 100 different seminars, and you can watch a few of the classes from each seminar or you can watch the entire seminar.  Each lesson is around 15-20 minutes and some run 3 - 4 hours if you take the entire seminar.

It might sound tedious but it is anything but that. So far I have watched classes and lessons in cooking eggs, making pastries, Astrophysics, American History, gardening, the Science of Sleep, writing poetry. The presentations are succinct and extremely well done.  You can start and stop any lesson at any time and you can re-watch them whenever you want.

In these times, when we can't go out and mingle, when staying home is what we are supposed to do, getting to sit in the safety and warmth of one's own home and actually learn new things is incredibly important. Well, at least to me. I am enjoying the hell of out what I am learning.  Just yesterday I watched Thomas Keller and Gordon Ramsay demonstrate how to scramble eggs!  And they were polar opposite methods of doing the same thing!

At least my mind can be out and about, even if my body has to stick close to home.