MIT Energy Studies Minor 12 Week Self Education Challenge

Grant Shannon
Jul 10, 2017 · 2 min read

Today I commenced a self education project — the ‘MIT Energy Studies Minor Challenge’. Based in Medellin, Colombia, I will be studying the 8 course, 1 year MIT Energy Studies Minor curriculum remotely, independently and in one quarter of the normal time, studying at least 50 hours week.

http://energy.mit.edu/minor/#requirements

MIT offer the Minor course content for free online via their Open Course Ware portal, including all lecture content, assessment, and most solutions.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/energy-courses/

And I also plan to keep my Spanish conversation flowing through frequent salsa lessons.

Midway through a career sabbatical as a Mechanical Engineer in the oil and gas industry, and after 3 months of backpacking, kitesurfing, volunteering and learning Spanish through Central America, I’ve decided to settle in Medellin, Colombia, and take on the most intensive 12 weeks of education in my life.

I will not be gaining any accreditation or formal qualification with MIT

I will, however, be expanding my current technical skillset and acquiring broader knowledge across non-technical domains, which will help me to better understand and provide solutions to the global energy crisis. The salient challenge of our time is how best to safely, reliably, and economically transition to more sustainable methods of energy generation, distribution, and consumption.

I want to play a part in this challenge.

You can follow my journey through a dedicated page on my personal webpage, linked below, which I will be using to document the entire learning process.

http://whatisgreaterthanhow.com/mit-energystudiesminor-challenge/

Grant Shannon

Written by

Engineer on sabbatical travelling Latin America. Language acquisiton, self education, personal efficacy, free thinking. Know more at whatisgreaterthanhow.com

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