I have finished my degree. Apologies for the lack of recent posts, but I've been working on the short-story-plus-commentary that was my final piece for the Open University. I had to submit a plan for my final story in February and, since then, I forgot the finer details, changed the characters and the ending, and ended up with something that could only be linked to the plan by someone with a very good imagination. Fortunately, this made the commentary very easy to write, with it being a thousand words based around 'I changed this because...'. So, I clicked on the 'Submit your work' button for the last time and now have to wait until July for my result.
Thankfully, due to the result of my 'Religions and Controversy' course, I know what degree classification I'll be getting, so that's not a worry, but it would be nice to get a Pass 2 for this creative writing course (I don't think I'll reach the giddy heights of a distinction for this one, sadly). So, that's five years of study finished (I'm not counting the year I wasted when I ducked out of a linguistics course after finding it too brain-mangling, or the science course on volcanoes and tsunamis in which I discovered my maths was not up to working out the speed that vibrations move through the earth, for a one-mark question). I actually feel rather sad. I started the whole thing with a short course on psychology, because I was bored and there was nothing on television. I didn't have to pay for it because, at the time, the OU was taking Tesco vouchers for level one courses. And that was going to be it. But then I found that learning was as addictive as other OU students said it was and, several thousand pounds later, I can't for the life of me remember writing an essay on Harlow's attachment theory, but I did, and it's presumably residing in the hard-to-reach bits of my brain somewhere (the same place as the whereabouts of my sunglasses).
So, what have I learnt? Apart from the 'fact' that Milton Keynes is considered the spiritual centre of the UK (oh, how we did laugh about that...)
The last point is rather worrying. While it's nice for the Boss Lady to praise the way I strive to improve myself, and while I love filling my head with 'new stuff', I'm already looking up prices of PhDs in Children's Literature (Cambridge Uni does one, and it's affordable, which I kind of wish it wasn't as I can see myself still being a student when I'm 90. On the other hand, the thought of the school children having to call me 'Doctor' could make it worthwhile). I'm finding learning very addictive, though, as I said before. I agree with that thing about 'the more I learn, the less I know,' although I can't remember if that's a quote from Socrates or Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
Thankfully, due to the result of my 'Religions and Controversy' course, I know what degree classification I'll be getting, so that's not a worry, but it would be nice to get a Pass 2 for this creative writing course (I don't think I'll reach the giddy heights of a distinction for this one, sadly). So, that's five years of study finished (I'm not counting the year I wasted when I ducked out of a linguistics course after finding it too brain-mangling, or the science course on volcanoes and tsunamis in which I discovered my maths was not up to working out the speed that vibrations move through the earth, for a one-mark question). I actually feel rather sad. I started the whole thing with a short course on psychology, because I was bored and there was nothing on television. I didn't have to pay for it because, at the time, the OU was taking Tesco vouchers for level one courses. And that was going to be it. But then I found that learning was as addictive as other OU students said it was and, several thousand pounds later, I can't for the life of me remember writing an essay on Harlow's attachment theory, but I did, and it's presumably residing in the hard-to-reach bits of my brain somewhere (the same place as the whereabouts of my sunglasses).
So, what have I learnt? Apart from the 'fact' that Milton Keynes is considered the spiritual centre of the UK (oh, how we did laugh about that...)
- I'm not as stupid as my high school teachers told me,
- I, very sadly, enjoy compiling a long list of references at the end of an assignment,
- I would be sunk without my spell-checker and the thesaurus on Word,
- I don't trust anything that isn't peer-reviewed and stocked in the OU library,
- I have an insatiable need to keep learning new things,
- I will never get a result that is good enough for me.
The last point is rather worrying. While it's nice for the Boss Lady to praise the way I strive to improve myself, and while I love filling my head with 'new stuff', I'm already looking up prices of PhDs in Children's Literature (Cambridge Uni does one, and it's affordable, which I kind of wish it wasn't as I can see myself still being a student when I'm 90. On the other hand, the thought of the school children having to call me 'Doctor' could make it worthwhile). I'm finding learning very addictive, though, as I said before. I agree with that thing about 'the more I learn, the less I know,' although I can't remember if that's a quote from Socrates or Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
The other option I'd like to consider...
Anyway. The Masters starts in September, so I'll do that, and see where the next three years takes me. Meanwhile, questions I'm getting fed up with hearing: 'Are you going to be a teacher?' Asked by staff members and usually answered by slightly hysterical laughter. 'When's your graduation?' Seriously? I could buy a huge pile of books for what it would cost me to fall up the steps at a graduation. 'How are you going to use your degree?' Ummm...
For now, there is reading, which can now be done without feeling guilty that I'm avoiding an assignment deadline. And I will try to keep the blog more up to date.
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