Wednesday, January 12, 2022 In the Classroom Again

Use it or lose, they say. This seems to apply to all sorts of things, but you don’t pay much attention to it until you’ve entered a certain age bracket and then it gets serious. Muscles you took for granted now have to be regularly used or they wither and atrophy away. Singing that was effortless now requires practice to sound half as good as you did in your prime. And the brain cells – who knew they were going to be such traitors in your latter years? All your devices seem to know what’s going on, as you get more and more suggestions to play word games like crossword and WORDsearch in an effort to stave off the inevitable declining of the gray matter. I thought aging was going to be like being sent out to pasture to graze, but it turns out to be more like hard work.

So I’m in the classroom again. I signed up for two online art classes through Udemy: Beginning Watercolor Essentials and The Drawing Masterclass. Both classes are starting very basic, but I’m excited about going on to more sophisticated projects. Here’s where we started out in the watercolor class:

The leaf. We’re supposed to be learning how to show a gradation of color by mixing more and more water in it. Seemed simple, but wasn’t. I like the paint puddles almost as much as the leaves.

And things were even more basic in the Drawing class:

Kris and I are also taking an online class through Hillsdale College called “Constitution 101.” We had the first lecture this morning, entitled “The Theory of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” We took notes and everything, but Kris couldn’t offer to carry my books since it’s online. Oh well. We took the first quiz and got 9 out of 10 right.

Let’s hope that this shifts the balance of the brain cells in the right direction. The next step would be learning to use new technology, but that’s for another day.

I’ll probably delete this during class in the morning.