I’m not going to lie: I am not a techie person. I would love to be, but somewhere along the road of life, I got it into my head that I’m bad at math and therefore anything that involves math. All growing up, I was obsessed with outer space, with planets and stars. I compiled huge binders of data I couldn’t understand, printed from the NASA web site. A friend and I obsessively increased our knowledge of Jupiter (our favorite planet at the time). That friend is now in a PhD program studying to become an astrophysicist, and later—if all goes as planned—she’s going to become an astronaut.

And I think she’ll make it.

Sometimes I wonder where we split off on our own paths, and it’s not rare for me to wonder what would have happened if I had stuck with math more. Because it really was the math part that deterred me. This last summer, when I was sifting through some old elementary school papers my mother had diligently kept all these years, I found a drawing from fourth grade I’d done of planets and stars and spaceships. Under the picture, though, next to a sad face, were the words: “Need to be good at math.”

And the weird thing is, I remember giving up on being an astronomer. (I wanted to be an astronomer, because I decided I did not want to be an astronaut after I saw Apollo 13.) I remember it was distinctly because of the math, even though all through school—while I was never a math whiz—I was never particularly bad at it either. In fact, in high school I was keeping up with most of the kids with advanced math skills. I actually excelled in physics, and in college (where I studied English and Asian Studies) I took whatever physics or space-related classes I could. I loved them! And I aced them. But never once did I actually consider going into physics.

It’s one of the few things I think I somewhat regret; however, looking back, I don’t think I would have changed a thing. This is mainly because I loved taking those non-major classes. Reading textbooks about space exploration, listening to the lectures, even taking the tests: there wasn’t any pressure. It was just for fun. And somehow, I think that’s how education should be more often.

Which is why I was so excited to find MIT’s OpenCourseWare. (Click the link to bring up the iTunes window.) MIT has put together a huge catalog of its classes—many of them, to my delight, physics and math classes—and posted them for free on the OpenCourseWare web site. You don’t have to sign up for anything (payment is purely voluntary via the donations link), and yet they’ve opened up a world of knowledge that I otherwise might not have access to unless I returned to college (and even then, not for free!). I stumbled across it purely by accident while looking for books on tape. I noticed that in iTunes there was a section for textbooks, and, out of curiosity, I dug in to see if there were any good physics or cosmology textbooks.

I ended up downloading all sixteen lectures for the MIT Physics I: Classical Mechanics. The video quality isn’t phenomenal, but considering that it cost me nothing, you won’t hear me complaining. It’s clear enough to see what the professor is writing on the chalkboard, and the sound is sharp. I’ve been eying the Aeronautics & Astronautics classes (MIT 16.885J: Aircraft Systems Engineering and 16.01 Unified Engineering I, II, III, & IV). And the Biological Engineering class. And the Brain & Cognitive Sciences classes. There are just so many! (Click the link to see the full list of MIT offerings.)

And while not all the classes on the MIT OpenCourseWare web site have video lectures (the ones above do), many do have at least a reading list, lecture notes, and homework assignments (some with answer sheets, too). That alone, for some of these classes, is a great starter point for anyone wanting to bone up on their knowledge of a particular subject. (I’m looking at you, Extrasolar Planets: Physics and Detection Techniques!)

The fact that MIT is actually releasing this information amazes me, considering how tight-fisted our nation seems to be when it comes to paying for education. Here, for the first time I’ve witnessed, is a project created to promote education for education’s sake. Not for a future job (you don’t get a degree from MIT, obviously), not under the pressure of knowing you’re paying an insane amount of money, so you better pay attention. This information is there if you want it (and it’s there for anyone with Internet access), but you no one’s forcing you to use it.

So… what will you study?

Born and raised in the dark woods and twisted apple orchards of New Hampshire, Maggie Jamison is a summa cum laude graduate of SUNY Albany with a double major in English and Asian Studies. She brings a bit of fresh blood to Apex from her experiences interning both in the marketing department of Tyco Electronics and in the IT and marketing departments of SUNY Press. Her writing, both fiction and non-fiction, has been published in a number of small venues and anthologies. Maggie is a Submissions Editor and Marketing Editor at Apex.