I've Passed!

I’ve known for a while that my OU result was due by this Friday, so I’ve been watching the post. There was a letter this morning with the OU postmark, so I sat down before I opened it. It was only a notice about registering for further courses!

So, I decided to check on line, not expecting anything. I logged in, and it popped up on my course record sheet.

Result: ‘Distinction’. I had to read it twice (actually more like about 4 times!). I got 83% in the exam apparently, and an overall score for my assignments of 84%, so I guess I’m pretty consistent.

They also provide more detail on individual answers (oh, how things have changed since St John’s when it was like pulling teeth to get any feedback at all), so I clicked on that. It seems my weakest answer was the Dickens one, which I’d actually felt was the most straightforward question. I got somewhere between 85-100% on both my Shakespeare and Romantic Poetry questions. Yes, that Romantic Poetry question that was really bad. To be honest, I’d hoped I’d managed a decent answer on Shakespeare, even though it was a pig of an extract.

I’m just a little bit chuffed. And I now have a Diploma in Literature.

(As an afterthought, hasn't the world changed, when my first thought about this is to blog about it, and to update my Facebook status!)

Before...

I sit and stare into space. The radio plays in the background. I’ve reached saturation point, where the words on the page in front of me mean nothing. The rain runs down the window causing small splashes on the sill. Everything is grey, dull, depressing. It suits my mood.

I wonder again why I’m doing this, why I’m putting myself through this stress, and I don’t really have an answer. It seemed like a good idea a year ago, when I’d just finished a job and thought I had the time.

I worry that whatever question I get on Romantic poetry I won’t be able to answer it*, I hope that the question on the Realist novel can be answered on Great Expectations. The only bit I’m not worried about is the Shakespeare***.

I should go and do something else, really, as sitting here isn’t productive. I can feel the nerves, fluttering, I’m unable to settle. My mind is like a butterfly, flitting about thinking of everything and nothing. This feels like the longest morning I’ve experienced for a very long time. The time seems to stretch out. I watch the vehicles going up and down the street. It’s surprisingly busy for a cul de sac.

At least by evening it will all be over.

*I wasn’t wrong there then, but I had to have a go!
**Thankfully it could be
***Turns out maybe I should have been – As You Like It is a lovely play, and they had to go and choose an uninteresting bit

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!

Not impressed!

My next OU assignment is due in a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks ago, I spent an afternoon in the Pitcher and Piano with Corinne discussing ideas around the topic we’d been given, the ‘use of memory’ in a couple of Romantic poems. On Friday I received a letter from the OU saying there’s a typo in the essay title. I read on. It shouldn’t say ‘use of memory’ it should be ‘treatment of the city’.

I’d say that’s more than a typo. It’s a flipping fundamental change!

Scenes from a theatre bar

Scene one

Conversation has turned to 'The Shakespeare Code'

‘I loved it’
‘I wanted to love it more’
‘You didn’t want Dr Who, you wanted David playing Shakespeare’
I consider for a moment
‘Yes, I did’

Scene two

‘We’ve moved onto the Romantic poets now, but I have to tell you something’ I pause, for a little dramatic effect. ‘We’re missing out Bryon’

I look at Corinne. It’s a good job she’s sitting down. Her mouth is open, and is moving, but any sound can only be heard by dogs.

‘How can you do the Romantics without Byron’
‘Don’t blame me, blame those who set the OU syllabus’ I try distraction ‘Did you see that Bo’sun* got a mention in the programme?’
Cat tries to assist: ‘we saw his grave...at Newstead...you're going to get married in a marquee on the lawn**’

*That would be Byron’s dog
**I'd like to stress that this is a long term plan

Senior moments

Yesterday

I'm at work, and I'm searching for my memory stick. I know that I put it oh-so-carefully in my bag the night before, but now it's nowhere to be found. I have to try and remember the information that I'd typed up. Much later, I go into my bag again, and into my purse - there is said memory stick! Of course, I'd put it 'somewhere safe'.

Today

I needed to go to the library to change my books for my OU course*. I've shoved them all in a bag, pick up my handbag, and got into the car. It's only as I pull into the car park that I realise that the bag of books is still on the living room floor. So, I reverse out of the parking space, and go home again!

I guess it's all downhill from here.

*My head is currently expolding at all the criticism on Dickens

Of course, this just brings more pressure

I got my first OU assignment back yesterday. Surprising really, as the deadline for submission isn’t until today. Don’t imagine that this is how things will go on. For once I was ahead of the game. It won’t continue, and my reading is already falling behind.

I’m impressed with the speed of marking, as it used to take a minimum of 6 months to get work marked at St John’s, which was hopeless for knowing how you were doing.

After initially stressing about the assignment, I buckled down to actually writing it, and quite enjoyed it. It’s amusing to read the tutor’s comments though, as they are still so similar to the ones I used to get at school. Yes, I do write long and convoluted sentences. I always have, and it’s not likely to change now.

I got 75%, which I’m pleased with, and it was enought to send me back to the books this morning with renewed enthusiasm. But now I have to live up to this in future assignments, and this will be more difficult as they deal with topics less familiar to me. Or, rather, I don’t have to, as nothing is at stake but my own pride, and yet I know that I will be striving for this. Again, this is part of me. Often I’d rather not start something than fall short of my own expectations. It’s quite a limiting trait, and yet it’s difficult to break. Of course, if my marks take a downward turn, then I won't be sharing them here!

So, maybe I'm not the tidiest person in the world

You know that feeling when you can't find something? It's in the house somewhere, but God only knows where. I've had that happen a couple of times recently with my OU coursework. First I couldn't find my text book. Looked all over, obvious places (not a chance of it being there of course) and less obvious. After a couple of days I found it lurking under a heap of other papers next to the sofa. Next, I have cds that I need to listen to. I know I found them when looking for the text book, and probably put them somewhere safe. But where? That's the mystery. I guess it's back to moving all the heaps of papers again, and they'll turn up - hopefully well before the deadline for my essay.

Going back

It was the first tutorial for my Open University course on Saturday. It was at St John’s*, so it was quite bizarre going back there, and I have to admit I felt quite envious of all the posh new buildings that have sprung up in the last few years**. They’ve certainly had an injection of money from somewhere, but perhaps that’s from all the land they’ve sold.

As the group gathers in a small seminar room, I’m trying to work out who the tutor is, as one woman is asking everyone questions on what they’ve done before – it turns out she’s another student, and the tutor is out of the room.

We move on to discussing our first novel, Pride and Prejudice. The tutor starts ‘now, I know people can find the language difficult, and quite dry, did you struggle with it?’
Around the room, the majority of the group are saying that yes, they’d found it hard going and hadn’t enjoyed it. I sit back rather amazed, as P&P is certainly one of my favourite, if not my favourite, novels, and has been since long before Colin Firth dived into a lake. I pipe up ‘I love it’, I don’t add that I don’t find the language difficult at all, what I do find hard is the level of analysis that we have to subject the text to.

Terms I’ve never heard before are being bandied around, and I know I’m finding this difficult to grasp. ‘A’ Level literature was never like this. I have to write 1000 words on a particular piece of the narrative, and as usual, my head is saying I can’t do this, why am I subjecting myself to this for a qualification I don’t need? I’m not sure I actually have an answer to this other than I hate to leave things unfinished. By the end of the session, I think I understand a little more, but it’s still going to be difficult. And I have a lot to get through before we get to the Shakespeare!


*Once, the College of Ripon and York St John, then York St John’s College, and now a university in it’s own right.
** I have so many memories of never having enough space to rehearse for productions, and once having to use the old ‘Wynsors World of Shoes’ shop, still with old shoe racks, as our rehearsal space for one of the final year projects!