Evaluation: 2nd 100 Days of Classics Education Plan

A confession: I took more than 100 Days for this second piece of my Classic Education Plan . . . 120 days.

I distracted myself with home maintenance and lost my way a bit.

With that aside, what worked and what didn't work?

WHAT WORKED

• Thelma Levine's lectures From Socrates to Satre

• Paul Freedman is a wonderful guide to The Early Middle Ages, 284 - 1000   (Open Yale Courses)

• Dante's Divine Comedy by Ronald B. Herzman and William R. Cook gives a contextual perspective to begin your journey with Dante. (The Great Courses)

• Teodolinda Barolini's lectures in her The Dante Course and her commentary on each Comedeia canto. These are two jewels in Columbia University's Digital Dante.

• Making resource spreadsheets for:
• The Consolation of Philosophy
• The Canterbury Tales
• Le morte d'Artur
• The Divine Comedy

• Setting two week goals and evaluating them. My son told me about "Sprints" used in managing software development that are brief meetings every 2 to 4 weeks where objectives are identified and evaluated. He agreed to be my 'team mate' where we meet every 2 weeks to set objectives and evaluate progress on our personal projects.

• Wikipedia articles providing previews for learning:
• The Annals by Tacitus
• The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• The Enneads by Plotinus
• Confessions by Augustine of Hippo
• On Christian Doctrine by Augustine of Hippo
• Beowulf
• Song of Roland
• The City of God by Augustine of Hippo
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Le morte d'Arthur
• Troilus and Criseyde
• The Canterbury Tales
• The Divine Comedy

WHAT DIDN'T WORK

• Allowing myself to get side-tracked. There were two parts to this distraction:
• The subject matter was lulling me to sleep
• ANALYSIS: it's a given that some things will be hard to hear, comprehend, learn. Make a decision to either learn it or accept the fact that you're not ready for it.
• CORRECTIVE ACTION: look for alternatives that will keep you awake: audio/video of material;  parsing it and making notes;  sketching it; singing it! If still not successful, note it and move on.
• Life
• ANALYSIS: Life happens.  Deal with it. That's your priority. 
• CORRECTIVE ACTION: Your objective is an hour a day of studying. If you have time for the internet, or entertainment, you have time for studying. Break it down if you need to: 20 minutes 3 times a day.

• Doing this evaluation at the end.
• Thinking about what worked and didn't work is suspect if it's two to three months from the learning experience.
• ANALYSIS: As a result of my distraction I didn't maintain my learning log. In addition I went off on a tangential Kanopy binge by watching: Understanding the New Testament; Understanding the Old Testament; Think like a Stoic without notating my learnings. Part of the learning process is using pen and paper or an electronic spreadsheet to help keep the learning in place,  to earmark the learning,  to capture the learning,  to summarize the learning,  to remember the learning!
• CORRECTIVE ACTION: 
• Notate: maintain your daily log; 
• Comment: at the end of each "chapter/work" make a statement about the content; 
• Summarize: as part of your sprint critique include a description of how the material/learning method affected you.