Oh the JOYS of a course

Governess Season: take a course

I love a course.

If you’ve been here a while, you are not surprised to learn this. As a child, I was the sort of nerd who loved everything about heading back to school: the cooler weather, the new stationery, fresh pencils, and a whole giant stack of books and subjects I would get to learn.

My favorite thing about being an adult is that I can take a new course whenever I like. Well that and being able to eat dessert at any time and call it a meal. But the course thing is real.

Those who are currently in or have taken my courses before will know that we are BIG fans of stickers and making things fun in that community. The same method applies for any sort of class I choose to enroll in as a student.

As a child, I white-knuckled it through the summer until it was time for school supply season again. I’m probably fantasizing about highlighters.

My favorite recent courses

What stationery will I need? (or can I justify)

This is the question I ask most often when choosing a course. That or what kind of fabric I will need, for a sewing course. Both hook me right in.

Over the last year and change, I’ve taken some truly joyful courses and thought I’d share my favorites as inspiration for this Bingo square:

• How to make a pattern from an existing favorite garment (offered in-person at Merchant & Mills, swoon.)

• Creating a Commonplace Book (I joined Skillshare just to take this specific course offered by The Pluviophile Papers, as I love Ruby’s approach to stationery so much.)

• Fiction plot structure and record keeping is Rachael Stephen’s expertise, and I’ve been revisiting her Story Magic Academy to get back into working on fiction this summer. I took it back in about 2021, and it’s been so helpful to return to.

What makes the best course?

The Merchant & Mills course above was live and in-person, allowing me to dedicate two full days to obsessing about sewing. Since most of us aren’t able to up and fly to another country to take a course, I find a mix of live and online to be the best for me.

When I first took Rachael Stephen’s course, there were still live Q+A sessions along with the pre-recorded lessons and it was possible to ask questions after reviewing the lessons. I got so much out of these sessions and this format hugely informed how I’ve created courses and programs ever since.

After running courses and programs for six years, this is what I find makes for the best course experience:

• Flexible scheduling: you can choose when you work on the material.

• Community: people who are sharing the learning experience help so much.

• Live sessions: the chance to ask the instructor questions and connect with other students.

• A time limit: Every course I’ve actually finished has had limited access to the content OR the community aspect. If I have everything forever, it’s never a priority. When I made my programs year-long, my students lost focus and reported less motivation. If you purchase a course that’s lifetime-access, create a time limit: do the course with a friend or in a group, for example.

• A clear goal: Even if that goal is just “have fun,” I have found the courses I’ve taken the most useful when I know why I’m taking them. When I arrived in Germany, I took German so I could go to the doctor and a dinner party in that language. Now I can do that, so future German classes have new goals.¹

• Any excuse to involve stickers and colored pencils. I’m only slightly joking here. I will create a chart that I can color in and sticker up for nearly anything, and when it’s to do with something I want to do for myself, so much the better.

If all of these elements are present, I know I’ll enjoy the course and get a lot out of it. Some of these elements need to be present in the course itself, like the flexible scheduling, but a lot of the rest I can create myself.

In revisiting Rachael Stephen’s course on story, I have decided to return to my novel for the next round of my Your Writing Year intensives, which starts June 29th.²
This gives me a deadline for reviewing the course: I want to be through it by the start date, so the whole session will be focused on the novel itself, not novel planning. If I didn’t set that parameter, I’d risk meandering through the course for the next six months. Fun, maybe, but not ultimately that helpful.

How to choose?

In the end, I always lead with curiosity.

What did you wish you studied in school? What class did you dream of taking but never had time for? Have a search to see if you can recreate that now.

I have a dream to take one of those in-person sessions of a week or ten days at universities so I get to cosplay being a student at Oxford of Cambridge or some other gorgeous academic setting, but I think that will have to wait until another year.

In the meantime, I’m happy DIYing and finding workshops as I need them.

Members: share your favorite courses in the comments — I’m always up for a new one!

1. My husband signed up for two weekends of pronunciation workshops here in Germany, with the goal to speak German with less of an American accent. Both workshops involved all day doing the sort of drills you might have seen in Steve Martin’s Pink Panther. He came home so tired he collapsed facedown on the floor each day, muttering to himself.

Know thy energy level and limits when signing up for courses! However, the happy ending is he gets lots of compliments on his accent at work now, where he speaks German all day… still with a strong American twang, which many locals here seem to find quite charming.

2. Is this a sneaky way to suggest this might be a good course for the “take a course” bingo square? Yes, my friends, it is. carolinedonahue.com/intensives