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Courses for free at your local library

A few weeks ago, city councillor Jillian Merrick put the call out for Frugal February, as a public forum to discuss penny-pinching ideas and ways to make your budget stretch in inventive ways. One of the items that Coun.
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A few weeks ago, city councillor Jillian Merrick put the call out for Frugal February, as a public forum to discuss penny-pinching ideas and ways to make your budget stretch in inventive ways.

One of the items that Coun. Merrick discussed during the initial media campaign was the free courses currently being offered at the Prince George Public Library through Gale Education.Now, whenever I hear the word "free," I get excited.Much to my husband's continued dismay, if I am offered any sort of free household item, I immediately say "yes" and take said item and add it to my increasing collection of Stuff I Don't Need That Is Cluttering Up Our House.

Things like free courses are good for my marriage because an online course does not have any paperwork or books with it.

Anyway, I heard about the free courses and then later found the link through the Prince George Library's website.There are a lot of different types of courses that are available to take (for free!) on a vast variety of topics. Browsing through the topics available, I thought that perhaps I wanted to learn more about a self-care topic rather than trying to see how my digital camera works. I figured that if I learned how to relax more efficiently that it may help me figure out how to use Adobe Photoshop without throwing the computer across the room.

In browsing the Alternative Medicine category (feeling mildly embarrassed that this was the category I was looking at), I found a number of courses that sounded interesting without being too granola-crunchy for my tastes. I eventually decided on trying out the Certificate in Mindfulness.

This course was one the shorter of the ones that I was interested in and was split into five lessons. In order to get your certificate, you need to pass each lesson quiz with 80 per cent or higher and complete the course evaluation form.If you are person who has test anxiety and the thought of voluntarily signing up for a course with five tests makes you break out in a cold sweat, fear not.The quizzes are multiple-choice and they are designed to be passed.Many of the questions on the quizzes were embarrassingly easy but I did fail one course initially (79 per cent) and I had to re-read the lesson in order to pass the quiz.

As for the course itself, I did learn a lot about the practice of mindfulness.

Much to my surprise, mindfulness is not just a bunch of hippies sitting around doing yoga.Mindfulness is the practice of being present in the moment, which, in turn, lowers your stress and increases your overall happiness.There is more to it, of course, but I don't want to give away the ending.You should sign up for yourself and see if there is something that interests you.

All you need is a Library Card and, to be frank, if you don't have a library card we can no longer be friends.

The library is a place where you can go and borrow whatever you want for free!Return your books, or movies or CDs on time and this relationship doesn't cost you a thing.If, however, you only return one out of the two discs of the musical Hamilton, you will get an embarrassing phone call from the library clerk.

Not that it happened to me.