Hello all organic and artificial life forms,

In this quarantine process, I did a couple of things that I want to share with you. By the way I’m well and healthy, I hope you’re all too.

I’m taking Deep Learning Specialization Course by Andrew Ng in Coursera. This specialization contains 5 different courses. I’m on the fourth week of the first course. In the end of this week, I will finish the first course and get my first certificate. Yay! Actually it isn’t that important to get a certificate but this option is more interactive than free option. In certificate option, every week I have programming assignments, with this way I participate learning more actively. In my opinion, the practice is one of the key elements of learning and assignments are wonderful for practising.

I’m in love with the things that I’m learning right now, all of them are amazing. Maybe, I might have problems with calculus and linear algebra because I have forgotten them a bit. But if we look with an optimistic perspective, I’m relearning linear algebra again. Another earning; when you think about it, studying math is one of the best activities in quarantine. As you can see I spent all my time to this course, instead of study medicine. Shhh, don’t tell my dad!

I don’t pay the course to get the certificate by the way. I applied for financial aid. Probably, you will know about this already but I will tell a bit about this opportunity for people who don’t know. In Coursera, most of the courses have an option for financial aid. When you get financial aid, you can enroll in the course for free and get access to all course materials.

So how can you apply for financial aid? There is a “Financial aid available” link next to the enroll button on the course page. Clicking this button will take you to the application form. In the form, they are asking your educational background, annual income and employment status. An addition to these, there are 2 questions you need to write at least 150 words for answers. Questions are “Why are you applying for Financial Aid?” and “How will taking this course help you achieve your career goals?” When you submit your application, they send your result in at least 15 days. Then you can start to dive into the wonderful subject that you choose. That’s all!

If you have more questions about it, you can visit this page.

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Of course I’m taking another course because my brain thinks that I don’t need to study medicine at all. What a misguided thought is this?!

I’m fascinated by insects and love to learn more about entomology. If you are entomology enthusiast like me, I strongly suggest Bugs 101 course. I’m learning comprehensive knowledge about insects step by step. It’s so educational and fun! I’m planning to write blog posts about what I learned. I hope I can make it.

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The good side of all this quarantine thing is people organize wonderful online seminars and I can attend them from my home. World Wide Neuro is one of them. They are organizing online neuroscience seminars and almost everyday wonderful scientist talk about their studies. I attended a couple of them. I don’t understand all the things they talk about because I don’t have enough knowledge to understand it. But I find new knowledge crumbs for further research. These crumbs are good nutrients to my mind that hungry for knowledge.

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Recently, my couple of university friends and I have been doing online Country Readings. We select disadvantaged countries, then we investigate their conditions from different aspects such as geography, economy, history, politics, sociocultural, health problems and systems. Then we are sharing what we have learned with each other. Thus we can have more information about these countries.

Making meaningful changes in the world begins by noticing the circumstances. To notice, you need to know.

My two friends and I as a group, we chose Niger. I learn lots of statistical knowledge about Niger, but I couldn’t connect with the people living there in this process. Then one day, I found their cultural creations, their architectures, clothes, musics, arts. Especially when I listen Niger Group Bombino’s song called Imuhar, I understood their feelings a little bit and I felt the connection that I’m searching.

Why am I talking about these? Thanks to these researches, I realized once again that art is a powerful and enchanted thing that connects all people from all times and places. Think about it, one person transfer their pains, joys, all the things that they lived to a song, then through some kind of ways, I listen to this song and I feel the same way. What a magical connection!

Niger has nomadic people called Tuareg. They’re called blue people of the desert as well. Group Bombino uses Tuareg language in their songs. I want to finish the post with my favorite song from them: Imuhar. If you want to look meaning of lyrics, you can look it up here.

Before that I want to give a little anecdote here. In Frank Herbert sci-fi book Dune, there are people called Fremen. They live in the desert planet Arrakis. They are the wise people of desert. Frank Herbert was inspired by Tuaregs when creating Fremens. I love these connections between the things that I love.

Live long and prosper🖖