First off, as you might have guessed by now from my hugely sporadic posting,
I am definitely not what can be classed as an 'organised' person who 'does what
they say they will'. Not even a little bit. With all the best intentions in the
world I, oh dear, completely forgot I'd even started a blog. Somewhere in that
confused, sickening muddle of a life I have between work, OU and trying to have
some semblance of a life outside of that I completely forgot I even had this
set up. There, I've said it, its out of the way, on with the blogging.
So we're now in week 7 of DD101 as I'm reliably informed by the module
website which means 1 whole TMA/Essay has been written and submitted (hurrah)
and therefore another one is due next week (boo). Overall I'm massively
enjoying the course, the material is interesting, easy to read and engage with
and helpfully I'm actually interested in the subject (always a good
start). I found the first TMA not too bad to write, had it written early,
submitted a few days before D-Day and then didn’t have too long sitting trying
not to vomit while I was waiting for my results to come back. I know everyone
who started in October, is further on in a different course or has in anyway
glanced at the marking system for this course will realise how stupid this is
seen as the whole thing only amounts to a whopping 5% of my overall grade for
this module and probably couldn’t have any less bearing on my overall grade
but, I'm a worrier, that and I absolutely hate failing at pretty much
everything meant that I was probably far more concerned to get my result back
than anyone ever needs to be.
Pointless panic aside my results came back, I ended up with a reasonably
decent score and some constructive feedback from the tutor so all in all can’t
complain.
One thing I can, and will, whinge about though is the insistence of my work
rota on overlapping literally every tutorial and day school on the module. So
far there have been 2 tutorials and a day’s school for this course both of
which have fallen when I'm working (I've worked one Saturday this month and low
and behold it was the Saturday the day school was scheduled for). Obviously
this isn’t (as far as I’m aware) malicious on behalf of either my work or OU but
it is incredably frustrating sitting watching PowerPoint presentations on your
own. It's also weirdly disconcerting now being able to put a face to a name as
far as tutors go, I have no idea why this is or what difference I think it
would make, it just seems to be one of the many neurotic things that’s
bothering me.
Digression over I'm now onto attempting to write TMA02 which is proving to
be somewhat of a mental block for me. After 5, yes 5, unsuccessful attempts to
write an essay plan I've moved on to just drafting paragraphs as I go and
working off a very basic and probably wrongly formatted essay plan which seems
to be going a little bit better. Although I'm here writing this so clearly
procrastination has still taken over slightly. I think the skills of essay
plans and narrowing down information into what is and isn’t needed to be
included is hopefully something that will come with time? If not I guess there’s
always the fulfilling job in a call centre I'm left with, lucky me.
On a much me genuinely happy note my parental 'Easter present' arrived last
week in the form of an incredibly shiny, working laptop to attempt the
disastrous essay on which is undeniably making the whole thing more appealing.
Writing badly done essays is altogether more enjoyable on a new laptop where
the space bar actually works, who’d have guessed?
So that’s it, as far as I can think, I'll try sticking a post it (literal
new obsession) somewhere to remind me that this exists and to come back and
update it soon. Mental breakdown not withstanding obviously.
