Help keep a wannabe autodidact on track!
April 2, 2013 9:53 PM   Subscribe

So, I really like learning new stuff and spend a fair bit of my spare time reading. If I won the euromillions I'd retire and spend the rest of my life at uni. In the real world, I have to keep paying rent/eating, so have been exploring MIT's open courseware - writing essays will give a focus to my reading and structure my repsonses to it more effectively, but it ends there. The feedback on my thoughts and arguments a lecturer would give me, or points to improve on, are still missing. This is what I need help with!

Is there anywhere online - forums, etc, where you could put an essay up for review? I realise this may be wishful thinking. Do people pay people to review their work? My areas of interest are literature, linguistics, media, film, cultural studies and gender studies.

Any tips? Even just to laugh in my face and tell me it ain't happening? How do autodidacts check the rigour and worth of their work?
posted by abbagoochie to Education (8 answers total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
Squidoo perhaps?
posted by oceanjesse at 10:18 PM on April 2, 2013


One possible route, though it might be more casual and less structured than what you're looking for, would be to start your own blog, post your essays there, and explicitly welcome feedback. There's no guarantee the feedback you'd get would be academically rigorous, but to increase the likelihood of getting comments that are valuable and challenging, it helps to be an active member of the online community in your area of interest. If you comment on blogs on related topics, participate in conversations, and build up friendships with fellow scholars (self-taught or otherwise) in those areas of interest, people might be more interested in engaging with you and your work.
posted by mixedmetaphors at 10:47 PM on April 2, 2013 [2 favorites]


I have no idea where you live, but in my neck of the woods, this is exactly what the Open Universiteit is for. In the UK, the Open University does the same thing.
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:19 AM on April 3, 2013


Response by poster: this is exactly what the Open University is for

I really wish I had the money for this, but they don't cater to Canada, where I am atm, anyway so it's a no-go. This was my first thought too!
posted by abbagoochie at 12:36 AM on April 3, 2013


OK, so I used to use this occasionally, and I'd never post a full essay there or anything, but you can ask linguistic questions at Ask A Linguist - there's a team of people answering stuff that interests them. They're all academics at universities across the world. Usually you can get very interesting replies and a lot of food for thought. Warning though - they are human too and you may receive arsey, pompous replies admonishing you for even asking from some more stuffy members. It only happened to me once, but a couple of my friends were more unfortunate.

Similar to that was Ask a Philosopher. They take a little longer to reply and only one person will address your question but since you aren't on a course right now that might not be a problem?

Feminism 101 might be a good starting point for gender studies, not sure of their forums though...
posted by everydayanewday at 12:50 AM on April 3, 2013


I took a free online course on data journalism and our assignments were posted to a forum for critique. It wasn't as good as it would have been in a real classroom, but it was definitely helpful and interesting.

Coursera has a ton of online courses to choose from. It looks more self-guided than you are really looking for though.
posted by forkisbetter at 10:04 AM on April 3, 2013


Feedback from lecturers is the single greatest value of a college education other than peer group formation/socialization (IMHO) .....so you will have to pay for this in some form.

Whether that form is barter, companionship, offering of other services etc. No one who you don't know is going to do a good, consistent job of this for free.
posted by lalochezia at 7:42 AM on April 4, 2013


Dropped back in to say:

Possibly Literature Network Forums

You could also try Sciforums here, here, and here.

(I haven't properly checked them out yet, but just putting it out there).
posted by everydayanewday at 10:29 PM on April 4, 2013


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