Places to Take Classes

If you're reading this it's probably 50-50 that you're a student already.  Even if you're not, though, you never know when you might want to take a refresher course in chemistry, study Mandarin Chinese, or learn how to waltz.

• Amador Valley Adult & Community Education - (Pleasanton)

• The Crucible - blacksmithing, ceramics, hot glass, neon, welding, and lots of other subjects, many of them involving fire (Oakland)

• Chabot Space & Science Center - mainly telescope-making classes and the like, but it's also a fine museum, and has some neat children's classes (Oakland) 

• Hellbent Studios (Mountain View) - Working with metal.  Plasma cutters, TIG welders, MIG welders, oxy-acetylene, bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!  'scuse me.  It's making stuff from metal.  Before you dismiss that, keep in mind that (despite advances in materials technology) the structural parts of most spacecraft are still made of metal.

• MIT OpenCourseWare - Strictly speaking this is not a "place", but rather an online archive.  Also, they're not classes per se, but notes and lectures from classes that have already happened.  Over 1800 courses, ranging from the ordinary (Classical Physics I) to the eccentric (Street Fighting Mathematics) to things that might get you investigated by the Department of Homeland Security (How to Stage a Revolution; Not inappropriate for Boston, already famous for that time a bunch of irate soon-to-be-former-Englishmen decided to riot against their lawful government because someone stuck a tax on their breakfast beverage.)

• Mountain View Los Altos Adult Education - The "simulated catalog" interface is annoying - Adobe is like five miles away, haven't you people heard of pdf files? - but there are some good classes. (Mountain View)

• Mountain View Recreation Programs and Services- (Mountain View)

• East Side Adult Education - (San Jose)

• Randall Museum - A museum of science, nature, and art for children and adults. Among other things, it offers a class each fall on building your own telescope. (San Francisco)

• San Jose State Open University - Never heard of it? With over 30,000 students, it's probably got classes on whatever you're looking to study. (San Jose)

• Stanford Continuing Studies- (Menlo Park)

• Sunnyvale-Cupertino Adult and Community Education - (Sunnyvale and Cupertino)

• Sunnyvale Parks and Recreation - (Sunnyvale)

• Temper Chi (Mountain View) - Hot glass.  Flame-working, for the most part (also called lamp-working or torch-working), which is to say, it's done with any oxygen-propane torch rather than a large furnace.

• UC Berkeley Extension - (Berkeley)

• UC Santa Cruz Extension - (Santa Cruz)