When I got back to Arizona, I immediately went back to my schedule of three computer science lectures a day. I'd streamlined my schedule of courses somewhat to concentrate on just a few---one of the intro courses from M.I.T., as well as Jerry Cain's CS107 at Stanford---a phenomenal course that I was savoring.
In Mexico, I had been diligent about continuing at least one lecture a day. That turned out to be pretty easy, since I was waking up long before the breakfast room opened, when the sky outside the big glass hotel window was still dark. I'd follow my normal home routine, without coffee of course, and had time to go through at least part of the Harvard intro course I had started right before leaving for Mexico.
It was just thirteen lectures, taught in the manner of a Ted Talk, on stage in front of several hundred Harvard undergraduates, and also beamed live to New Haven where Yale students could co-enroll in the course.
The professor was himself a Harvard graduate who had switched to computer science after a taking the same course as he was teaching now. He had empathy for beginners. He moved through subjects very quickly, with a quick patter. Many people on line talked about the course, so I had decided I had to sample. It was easy to follow. I knew almost everything in it (although not completely everything) so I didn't have to take very many notes. That allowed me to listen to it in almost real time, without stopping constantly to write down notes, as I must do with the M.I.T. and Stanford courses I was doing.
The conference was along enough that I almost finished the entire Harvard course while I was still in Mexico, but I had a couple left during the flight home, and it wasn't until I few days later that I could cross off the last lecture number on the sheet of paper where I kept a list of all the lectures of the courses I was intending to listen to, numbered in sequence under each course listing. It was like my own personal course schedule.
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