One of the benefits of working at the University is that, after a year’s employment, I can take off 3 hours a week from work to take classes. The caveat, however, is that the classes either have to be part of a degree program or directly related to one’s work.

I’ve quite liked the freedom from homework I’ve enjoyed since finishing college, but it would seem a shame not to take some advantage of this benefit. While the classes I’d most be interested in taking aren’t at all related to my job, even within the Computer Science department there are several courses that sound fascinating: Human Factors of Computer Science, Advanced Artificial Intelligence, Distributed Computing, Neural Networks. Unfortunately, the Graduate College really seems to want people to enroll in a degree program to take graduate-level courses, and it’s tough to get enthusiastic about that now, especially given that I don’t have any of the undergraduate classes that they consider prerequisites. (My degree was in Music Education.)

So, what to do? I guess I’ll nose around the department a bit and see if they have any provision for people who have worked in the industry for a long while, but don’t have the formal schooling or, even better, might allow me to sit in on classes I’m interested in without worrying about a degree program.