Two to go

I've not said much about my OU course recently. It's been difficult to keep up with the study schedule with everything else that's been going on. Well, you can hardly study when driving a car, can you?

I'm currently in the middle of my Literature and Gender module. It's not my favourite. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the Romantic Literature one, particularly discovering female Romantic poets, but this module, not so much!

So I approached the first assignment on this block with some trepidation. I even had to ask for an extension, as I just didn't have the time to finish it by the due date. My usual tutorial was cancelled, and I went to one with with different tutor in Leeds, who took quite a different approach. To be honest, I was stressing out.

I had to write about The Color* Purple, and one other prose piece from the block, and chose The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Two texts I was unfamiliar with before the course. I've never even seen the film of The Color Purple (though I did think about watching it as part of my studies). I spent a lot of time trying to get my head round the whole idea of what writing 'with gender on the agenda' (the module's buzz phrase) was all about. Eventually I felt I was getting somewhere. I can sort of see where they're coming from, but it's not an approach I would ever consciously take.

I finally pulled something together a couple of weeks ago. One thing I love about literature is that you can always take the counter argument to the one that the question poses, as long as you can justify your approach. I didn't think it was great, but it was finished.

I got it back the other day. I got 82. I'm pretty pleased with that given how difficult it was to write.

The next one is on Top Girls, so we've finally moved on to drama. Hurrah. But still with 'gender on the agenda'. I sort of feel I know what they're after now, so I have to write this one at some point over the next week. And then, finally, we move on to Shakespeare, Aphra Behn and the Canon.

Five down, two to go.

*which I always want to spell 'colour'. Damn American spelling!