How to choose an online course for the term?

Fall 2014 Courses, Mythgard Institute, Signum University

There's open enrollment for the next term at Signum University already for the Fall 2014 term.  The summer has seemed to speed by this year.  I'm surprised to be thinking about courses again.

There are always three topics for the lecture courses, along with some foreign languages available each term.  This term the lecture courses are on Lewis and Tolkien, Science Fiction, and the Root of Fantasy before Tolkien.

Each course is taught by an expert in that field.  Lewis and Tolkien is taught by Signum's own president, Corey Olsen, of The Tolkien Professor|podcast fame and author of Exploring JRRTolkien's The Hobbit.Science Fiction is taught by the eminent Dr. Amy Sturgis.  And, finally, the Fantasy before Tolkien course is taught by Douglas A. Anderson, editor of The Annotated Hobbit.

With such awesome faculty, narrowing the choice of course down to just one (for my own sanity!) is going to be very hard.  I do like Dr. Olsen's teaching style, but have had a lot of Tolkien lately.  That's also a reason for steering away from Douglas Anderson's course as well, plus the vastness of the readings from Homer to Tolkien covers a large area and I'm a bear of very little brain when the migraines hit.  So, that leads me to looking closely at Dr. Sturgis' course.  I have read the larger works the course will be covering, and just need to read the short stories from the anthologies for the most part, to understand the topic.

I've been reading/listening to audiobooks of the Lord of the Rings and that feels like ancient history.  Whereas, the stories for science fiction will have more of a futuristic feeling, even if set in the past,m at least they are set in the 1800s and not the ages before time.  I'm ready for a more current reading material, and stories to carry me away from reality.  Escapism is one of the themes I expect we will cover in Dr. Sturgis' course, as well as the other.  With these migraines, I need chances to escape and feel like an outsider of the human race at times.

So, that's it for my thinking on how to choose the online course for next term.  What course is most interesting to you?  And, why?