Student of Life

I just stumbled upon the most incredible thing this week: Academic Earth, which offers free online lectures and courses from universities such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and MIT -- among many others.  Last night, Tyler and I watched a great psychology video from a Yale professor on childhood development and the development of thought.

It's an amazing leap in democratizing education (there's a Slate article on "How to go to Harvard for free").  A historian to the core, I also really like the idea of having former classes taped for later reference (I was quite surprised to see a Jeff Sachs lecture from 2007, along with the entire semester of the "Conceptual Foundations" course at SIPA!)  As the Slate reporter puts it: "Academic Earth is unexpectedly irresistible.  It's like Hulu, for nerds."

Lately, I have been feeling a lot like a student (although, incredibly, getting paid to research subjects that I find fascinating!)  Right now, I'm writing a report called: "The Role of Sustainable Businesses in Delivering Health Care for the BOP: Learning Journeys of Disruptive Models."  It's a report to inform the Sustainable Business Task Force, headed by Merck and part of the UN's Every Woman, Every Child initiative.  It's amazing fun, and a wonderful opportunity to consolidate my learnings from the last few years working with LifeSpring, and learning more about other market-based models in the global health space.

What's funny is that I find my method of writing to be much the same as in college: work on the outline first, spend an inordinate amount of time getting the title page to look just right (including colors, font size, and of course deciding on the title itself), and take lots of breaks in the middle (I never knew there were so many videos of babies and puppies on youtube).  I find myself constantly needing to delete "consultant" speak, like "incentivize", "operationalize", and "actionize."  There's an innate sense of accomplishment in seeing a blank Word document somehow morph into twenty pages in a day, and the added bonus of researching a topic I'm truly passionate about.

Maybe Tyler won't be the only one going back to school this fall...

(Only kidding, Mom and Dad!)