Did you sleep through Shakespeare in high school and now you want to find out what the big bru-ha-ha about the Bard is all about? Did you snooze in your college history class and now you're wondering if you're doomed to repeat it? Does the thought of science and math send you into outer space but you really want to know what a quark is? You, my friend, are a candidate for the courses from The Teaching Company. Maybe you've seen ads for them in The Wall Street Journal. Those glowing reviews they print seem just too good to be true. Well, I'm here to say, they most emphatically ARE NOT!

I was first introduced to the high school and college level courses offered by The Teaching Company when I checked one out through my local library. It was a history course that was great. Maybe you had a boring history teacher in high school, or like me, skipped history altogether in college. Now, like me,  you'd like to get a background to help you put the world's troubles in perspective. These courses, which come on CD and DVD, are much cheaper than a class at a local college - plus you can view/listen them on your schedule. You can't get college credit, but they would be a wonderful way to prepare for a CLEP test.

While your local library is a great starting place, they may not have all the courses you might be interested in perusing. Here's where eBay comes into play. There are bunches of folks out there who have bought The Teaching Company courses, viewed/listened to them, and who would like to recoup some of the cost of the course by selling it on eBay. You can find courses that The Teaching Company has discontinued completely, that have been discontinued in a certain format (such as audio cassettes or VHS), and courses that are still available from the catalog. Type in "Teaching Company" and you'll have pages of auction and Buy It Now items to look through. And if you need more information on a course, you can go to www.teach12.com.

So, get ready to fill in those gaps in your education. Get ready to wax philosophical about quarks and mesons. Get ready to have a blast being a Lifelong Learner at Home!