Growing up, school was never really my thing. I jacked off through high school, and sadly, I do not know much about the world. History, geography, these things are absent to me, and I want to learn! I have an overwhelming desire to see and know the world, to know what happened thousands of years ago, to know what happened 300 years ago. It interest me greatly.

I'm going to a community college in the fall, and I want to take some history or geography classes. I'm really interested in Europe, Ireland, and Mongolia. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

There is a trilogy called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle by Neal Stephenson. This is a fun kind of alternative history tale. But it is actually a good introduction to the Enlightenment, the start of the modern age so to speak.

Also there is a book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Western_Philosophy by Bertrand Russell. This is good to just leave on the toilet and read for a few minutes each day.

Also there are a lot of good documentaries on YouTube. Look for BBC or PBS stuff. You can use the ,long tag to find them more easily

Let's see, Ireland has:

Stones.

Fields.

Cows.

Sheep.

Rain.

Gob[censored]es.

That's Ireland.

...

...

Anyways...try the 150-151 courses. Or whatever they are labeled at the school you will got to. They are the introductory History course classes. Should be a good starting point. Other than that...well you are on the internet, really, just start looking it up on your own.

You can go to history course in college. Good Luck!

Just watch the news. You'll see the world is completely [censored] up and not worth seeing. It's too dangerous. Especially if you're American. The world hates us.

America is the only place in the world worth seeing.

Sounds like going to college is certainly a step in the right direction to further your interests, I wish you the best of luck with that and hope you find all that your looking for there.

You can learn geography and history on your own. That can supplement the stuff you learned in community college.

Being online kinda helps too. People tend to talk/complain a lot about regional differences in their nations.

Go to community college. Without question. In a lot of cases, you'll get more of an education than in University. Got a lot of young, inspired teachers or teachers not distracted by research, and it's less of a shameless degree farm.

That said, you'll want to be thinking about transfer from the get go. An Associates degree will get you [censored] all in the way of job opportunities, and two years goes by fast. You'll be done before you even start, really. Two years goes by fast. Be prepared to work your butt off. You won't need an incredible GPA to transfer, and CC is easy peasy, but it will open doors. And NEVER walk away from classes. When I was 18, I dropped out of Community College midsemester without bothering to withdraw. Result was a .75 GPA. Three semesters of nearly perfect scores, and I transferred with the estimable GPA of 2.91. Your GPA will pretty much get wiped when and if you transfer, but doing well out the gate will save you a lot of grief.

Look up all of the professors on Ratemyprofessor.com before you even enroll. I failed to do this last semester, and it landed me with a nightmare class that I had to work so damn hard on just to get a C that all of my other classes took a hit as well. See, some teachers (more in university than CC) see themselves as gatekeepers, and live to keep the riff raff out. Make sure you don't get one of these guys.

Pretty much any History of Western Europe class will look at England in detail, but you'll not likely find a class at CC for Ireland or Mongolia. Maybe Mongolia in the "Mongols" sense in an Asian or Middle Eastern History course, but nothing devoted solely to Mongolia. You're looking at grad school stuff there, I think. But, you put in the time, and you'll pretty much be able to study whatever you're interested in. You start general, and you specialize gradually as you go.

Shameless Major plug here: If you want to learn about the world, History is all well and good, particularly with the postmodern "Let's focus on the common people" approach, but if you want to understand the world as it is, you can't go better than Cultural Anthropology. Like History and Geography, it's a masters program at least (as in, there's a lot of bachelors of all three flipping burgers), but it pays off. Essentially, say you're interested in Mongolia. So, go live there for a couple years, meet people, observe them, study them, and write about it. And the only way you can do that is by getting an in into their culture and actually participating in it. We call that participant observation. And you can do that anywhere. Want to study the people of the Ireland? Go ahead. Want to study the culture of truckers in America, you can do that to. If there's a culture, you study it. You'll learn a lot about the world fairly quickly. Unlike history, you're focused on the here and now (with some understanding of history by necessity) and unlike geography, you're focused on people rather than borders and landmasses.

I really just reccommend diving into the internet on respectable sites, possibly seeing if you can get access to a scholarly database if possible.

And just read books, go on amazon, look at reviews, etc. start out with a general reference book for the areas and time periods and when you find an era, or region you like, find more specific books if possible.

This is of curse the cheap way, but if you got the money and time, like people say take some classes.

Well I make low income, so here in Cali we get a bogwaiver, which makes all classes free. Also, I applied for financial aid thru Fasfa and got approved for a grant, so im getting paid 5 g's a semester to go to school.

That's pretty cool. I once had to pay $500 every semester for a 3 credit course in the local community college. Of course, I worked in an institution that had tuition reimbursemant, but they pay only per credit, which is $159 last time I attended community college. So while I paid courses out of my own pocket, I got $300+ back only at the end of the semester. I wish it could've been free, but no worries. I still got somewhat of a discount.

I always encourage people to look for grants and scholarships, regardless of where you go. You worry less about financing your education and focus more on actual learning. I wanted to get a scholarship for my second Bachelors, but for some reason we didn't get any. Take advantage of such opportunities if you're planning to go for your bachelors. Make friends with Financial Aid.