This is a time tailor-made for upskilling. It doesn’t have to be about your job. Take a course you would have liked to have taken in college, learn a skill you once admired. The options are insanely vast. You can pick philosophy or well-being, dance, gaming, cheese-making. You can spend hours inspecting the plausibility of life on other planets. You can do these courses at your pace, and many of them are free.
Well-being:Money may not be able to buy happiness, but you can study what does improve the HQ, free, on Coursera. This course by Yale University correlates well-being with external factors (spoiler alert – money does count, but so does love). Study how the brain measures happiness, and why so many falter in pursuit of it. Blogger Indu Harikumar is in the second week. “This part teaches you to replay happy parts of your day; it’s very calming,” she says. “I’ve actually done this course before, but I keep returning to it.”
Pro gaming: An hour-long course hosted by Udemy is divided into 12 bite-sized lectures aimed at helping amateur gamers enter the world of e-sports. The course costs ₹420 and was developed by Addiktz, which has been offering performance improvement programmes for aspiring pro gamers and e-sports teams since 2011. Expect tips on common rookie mistakes; the right moves emotionally and monetarily; and how to maximise performance.
The science of gastronomy: Explore the science of recipes — and why mankind started cooking at all. This free Coursera course is taught by two professors from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. And by the time they’re done, you’ll know why the chocolate chip cookie is so chewy.
Graphic novels: There’s plenty on offer on Skillshare, Coursera and Udemy. Some courses focus on drawing manga and anime, others on specialised areas, like storyboard creation. Deepti Ronghe, 26, a video editor, says they’re helping her rediscover her love for manga. “There aren’t many books around that teach you to draw manga, and the ones available are so expensive,” she says. “This is affordable, and I’m learning so much.”
Innovating: This is going to be an important skill, in life after Covid. The free course on edX by Dartmouth University is about learning to think and create innovatively and be resourceful. It uses real-life examples like the Narayana Health hospital in Bengaluru that used the concept of mass production to cut costs and improve services for all.
“A key thing I learnt was that strategy is a misused term. The course teaches what it really means and how to formulate a good one,” says Rasika Iyer who handles digital media for a hospitality brand.
