The Professors: This is what would happen if you took Heidi Klum, crossed her with a chemical biologist and then made her stand next to a mathematician who is fond of fleece.

Some believe they herald a new dawn of equality in learning and some think they are the ruin of the American educational system, but regardless of how you feel about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Classes), there are more of them being offered with every passing semester. The idea is that anyone can audit a digital course from a prestigious university (for free, provided one doesn’t want academic credit for it), which is how I ended up attending my first Harvard class, Science and Cooking, while eating leftover pad thai in my pajamas.

One of the allegations against MOOCs is that they can’t possibly be rigorous enough to mirror an actual university class (see: pajamas, leftover pad thai), and I admit that the first few pitches in Science and Cooking seemed like big, slow-moving softballs. There were some fun facts about the invention of the pressure cooker and the modern oven. There was Ferran Adria jumping around and talking about spherification of yogurt like it was a religious experience. There was a music video about El Bulli (Adria’s famous restaurant) featuring a compilation of pretty food pictures edited together at a breakneck pace and set to music that would not have been out of place in a Hans-Zimmer-composed uber-dramatic film soundtrack. This was going to be a piece of cake.

And then I arrived at Lecture #2, in which the actual professors (a German chemical biologist and a mathematician who always looks like he just woke up from a nap) took the reins of the class back from the celebrity chefs. We started to calculate how many molecules were in a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Wait, what’s Avogadro’s number again? Am I really supposed to already know that water is a byproduct of the formation of triglycerides? How the hell am I supposed to know what protein is found in an egg and what its shape is like? And can I even solve logarithms without first locating the graphic calculator that I haven’t turned on since I was seventeen? I started to have bad, sweaty flashbacks to high school chemistry and my teacher, Mrs. Grimm (yes, her real name, and so very apt) telling me that I should be a chemist. Never had I felt so acutely that she had been completely deluded. I chickened out before I did the lab or the homework, opting to go on a run instead, and then obsessed the entire time I was jogging that maybe I’d somehow neglected my true mantle of nerd and become a jock.

So…I’d say my opinion of MOOCing so far is rather mixed, but have no fear: I’m far too masochistic to give up in the first week of a ten week course, even if it’s one that is completely unrequired and that no one will care if I complete. I will totally figure out how to calculate molecular weight or at least fake it, so that I can learn how to make molten chocolate cake in week eight. And while I promise not to bore you with every single moment of my MOOC progress, I can’t help but think this would be better if some gentle readers would do this along with me. Go on, it’s not too late to sign up over at EdX. It will be fun! Or something sort of resembling fun at least. We’ll sing along to the El Bulli music video together. And Mrs. Grimm will smile upon you in your dreams, I promise.