Getting back down to it
For the past few weeks I’ve been very side-tracked by my health, managing my forum and trying to mount a takeover bid to rule the world or something like that, holding online meetings which with an average length of three hours have somewhat sapped what little physical strength I have, chilling out and reading, getting depressed, and generally opting out of the real world and retreating into a kind of alternate online reality by way of reading, and spending time as my alter-ego Bliss, and writing, and generally forgetting that I’m doing two Open University courses, and that cut-off dates for three assignments are fast approaching.
I should point out that this is not the recommended way to undertake Open University courses. Generally accepted wisdom states that you should at least try to make some attempt to keep up with the course timetable, and not totally forget when you’ve got assignments due in and have to rummage around to check whether you’ve missed anything vital and whether your attendance at a tutorial is required or anything. Nevertheless, after the gigantic struggle I had trying to complete both TMA1 for T175 (the networked living etc. course) and TMA3 for M150 (the computing and data one) I was totally exhausted, having finished the T175 assignment which had been due in two days after the horrendous experience that was M150 TMA3 at some ungodly hour in the morning of the day it was due in, and then getting up four hours later to go to work. This is not a recommended way to complete OU TMAs (tutor marked assignments).
And so, last weekend I found myself three and a half units behind on M150, and a whole block behind on T175. Now right since starting T175 in some ways I wished I’d never started it. It wasn’t that the course didn’t interest me, but the growing realisation that these days in my opiate induced fog, trying to do two courses at once just doesn’t work. Not with all my other commitments anyway. Unfortunately I realised this too late, a few days into the course, by which time it was too late to back out, and I was stuck with paying £380 whether I finished the course or not. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been seriously thinking that still dropping T175 might be wise, but I knew in my heart that stubborn as I am I’d probably battle on with it to the bitter end anyway, and so last weekend I set to trying to catch up.
So last weekend, a block behind off I set. Block 2 of the course is presented entirely online, so on the positive side I didn’t have to move from my customary position on the sofa-bed. About six hours later I finished the block. How? A hell of a lot of skim-reading, and much missing out of practical exercises. It’s lucky that the first part of T175 virtually mirrors the early parts of M150, and having been a webbie for some years now and knowing my way round HTML, there was nothing new in the unit, so it was simply a matter of making sure I was up to speed on the block’s terminology and themes (the OU likes “themes”). That done, I could then embark on the CMA, a multiple choice list of questions, as the CMA’s the first of three assignments due in in the very near future. The CMA didn’t present many problems. The main one was figuring out that the sneaky course team have taken a mix and match approach in the answers provided to pick from for each question as to whether to use 1000 or 1024 for a “kilo”-whatever, and whether equally sneakily we’re referring to k’s, K’s, b’s or B’s – bits and bytes.
Inevitably though towards the end of the week with the completion of the CMA Bliss took over again though, and the past couple of days have been spent largely debating literature online and pulling apart every theme and symbolism, every word and meaning in a piece of literature. I’m classing that as not goofing off and wasting valuable study time though on the grounds it’s developing my analytical and debating skills.
Speaking of which, Thursday I found myself embroiled in an online chat on the course forums for one of the TMA questions discussing to what extent virtual worlds are replacing real ones. It’s all part of us comparing the relative merits and drawbacks of synchronous versus asynchronous communication methods. *yawn* Actually, it was quite interesting, even though there were only three of us in on the chat, though we did go off at a bit of a tangent about virtual worlds and such like. It’d probably make a reasonably interesting blog post, though of course it’ll have to wait until after 24th April and the TMA’s cut-off date for submission, as probably a large portion of it would be similar to what I’ll end up writing as my TMA answer. I also discovered this here little blog of mine has found another reader when I found myself responding to another student in the chat area of the course forums and explaining that web design’s not all beer and skittles, or in this case WYSIWYG editors and pocketing huge bank balances. Said student was impressed by my “jack of all trades and master of none” approach to slinging websites together, and had followed my sig link to here and enjoyed my demented ramblings. It takes all sorts I guess. 
The one thing the chat TMA discussion did do though was kick-start me back into learning mode and kind of topped my enthusiasm reservoirs back up. I was beginning to wonder what the whole point of it all was, and why I was bothering, but the learning spirit in me’s been kicked back into life again for now. Yes, I know that getting so far behind and then having to frantically work to get caught back up isn’t the recommended way to do it, but I’ve never been one for playing by the rules, and for me this works. I needed time to chill, to re-charge my batteries a bit, and to socialise a bit, and while the docs have been trying to drum the idea of pacing myself into me for years, I often work best when I’m under pressure.
Anyhow, I digress. A large part of the next TMA for T175 seems to centre around the whole concept of “reflective learning”, and as I’ve mentioned before, we’re supposed to be keeping a journal of our learning experiences. The OU’s very big on “reflective learning”. Small problem with that though – I just ain’t got the hours in the day to analyse my learning experiences to the nth degree! Reflective learning’s a nice idea in principle, but I’d imagine that most students, particularly mature distance learning students with jobs and families and other responsibilities simply don’t have the luxury of the time to engage in an in-depth analysis of quite how they feel about a particular unit, or how they might read it differently next time – you fit it in with your life whenever you can grab a few minutes, and hope for the best. You’re supposed to draw up a study timetable, but in the amount of time it takes you to figure out where you can fit Unit 5 in between mowing the lawn and going to to supermarket, you could have answered half a TMA question already!
I guess it doesn’t help that for the last fifteen years or so I’ve been studying in some form or another and
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