No previous training or education is required. Our only assumption is that you have at least some ideas or some sense of a project that you want to develop. There are teenagers running successful philosophy Youtube channels and there are PhDs who have never published a blog post. Some participants will have an academic background, but on the internet frontier we're all still freshmen.

This course is now for writing only, because writing is the base of all other media/'content.' Many of us have Youtube channels and podcasts and so forth, but ultimately everything is downstream of original thinking and original writing. So that's what we do.

We do have people who use the indie scholars program to support work they are doing for a degree elsewhere. These members may or may not be interested in building a serious independent project on the internet right now, but they find indie scholars worth the price usually for one of the following reasons: To maintain regular exposure to outside thinkers and creators in the wild west; to learn about their options for building a parallel path on the internet (in case their institutional trajectory doesn't pan out how they'd like it to); or they just want the co-working sessions to make sure they're putting in the hours on their degree work.

Our popular Work Sessions are now member-run periodically. I can't formally promise them given the 1-year length of the program, but they may occur. Each work session is composed of two "writing cycles." A cycle is composed of a 45-minute sprint, followed by a 10-minute break.

In the 45-minute sprint, everyone has their mics off; everyone promises to work only on original writing. There is some wiggle room in the definition of "writing," in the case of engineers or visual artists, for instance, but you get the point: The primary form of original thinking and creation germane to your primary intellectual or creative project. No email, no social media, etc.

In the 10-minute breaks, people can do whatever—bathroom, get a drink, and everyone chats. Sometimes people ask each other substantive questions related to what they're working on, but with a water-cooler vibe.

Often, yes. Some of our members have been reimbursed by employers, some have paid using their university research budgets. We'll even give you a form letter you can send to your boss or university HR department.

If you enroll, attend the first session, and decide it's not what you were expecting, we're happy to give a full refund anytime in the first week after that—no questions asked.

Sure. Just send a payment and then email me a link to the transaction record (justin{at}otherlife[dot]co).

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