Relief

Earlier this week, I sent an email to the OU, explaining how I really wanted to give up my course. 

A couple of years ago, the OU put up its prices, along with every other university in England. The price of a 60 credit module went up from about £700 to £2500. Those of us who had already started our studies were put on what they're calling 'transitional fees', meaning that we pay the old fees until we finish our degrees or until 2017, whichever is sooner. This is on the condition that we study at least one module a year. (My grand plan of studying until I die and piling up the degrees is sadly no longer feasible.)

My worry at ducking out of my course was that I'd have several months without studying and may lose my transitional funding, in which case my time with the OU would have to come to an end. My email got an automated reply, telling me that I'd hear back within two days 'unless it was a complicated issue'. Three days later and fed up with spending more time awake than asleep at night, I phoned student support. Thankfully, I had a very patient person on the other end of the phone ('I'm here till 5.30, so take your time,' she told me, which made me laugh). Anyway, I'm now off the course, haven't lost my transitional funding, and will hopefully get a bit of a refund. Mission accomplished. 

So I'm going to get the book list for 20th Century Literature and read through it at my leisure. I have to finish Anne of Green Gables first, though. I've been comfort reading. Other people comfort eat, I head for well-thumbed books rather than biscuits. Anne has just broken her slate over Gilbert Blythe's head, so I'll let her finish before I begin Chekhov. 

I can also give proper attention to this weekend, knowing I've no longer got an impossible assignment hanging over me. We're driving to Manchester tomorrow, as Son Number One would like to study military history there. History has interested him for years, thanks to an enthusiastic supply teacher he had when he was about eight. 'A' levels narrowed the interest down to military history, and he found that Manchester uni does a course that includes peacekeeping and terrorism (the study of terrorism, I should say). So, just when I feel like a lie-in, we have to be up at 6.30 tomorrow morning, ready to drive for four hours, attend a presentation, and drive home again. 

Happy days...

Admitting defeat

The words 'I don't get it' usually come from two types of children in the classroom. One of my favourite year 5 girls says it after she's sweated blood over a problem and has rubbed out her work so often she's worn a hole in her page. Another child (and not so much a favourite) says it because she can't be bothered and wants everything done for her. 

I'm hoping I'm more the former, in that I've tried so hard to understand this creativity in language stuff. I remember reading a legal document when my parents wanted me to have power of attorney in case they suddenly went doolally. I read it, but didn't understand every word, putting my trust in the family of solicitors that we've worked with for years. Reading Carter's book gives me the same feeling of confusion and hopelessness, except that I've got to use it to write essays that will give me useful scores. I got an email from my lovely tutor today, giving ideas and tips for the next assignment, and I didn't understand half of that, either. 

What annoys me is that I know it has the potential to be a fascinating subject, but the course uses so many technical terms that it's like reading a car manual. Meanings of normal words are changed, so for example, the word 'literature' doesn't mean 'literature' any more, but something totally different. 

In short, I am feeling like an idiot, and I'm angry with myself for being so thick. I feel like a girl at school the other week, who burst into tears after the teacher asked her a question in maths. 'But I didn't even understand what she was asking me,' she sobbed. 

After having a mini-tantrum (thank goodness The Husband is so understanding), I dried my eyes and sent an email to the OU asking if I can transfer any of my funding to the next presentation of 20th Century Literature. If I'm not able to transfer funding (which means I'll be nearly £700 out of pocket), then that's it - end of studying. I am not going to spend from now until June in a permanent state of stress. 

I hate giving up, but I have to remind myself that I'm doing this because I want to - not because I have to. Unfortunately, the literature course doesn't start until next September, so that'll be a fair time with no studying and that's one of the reasons I'm not sure I'll be able to save any of my money. Anyway, hopefully I'll find out in a day or two. 

In the meantime, I'm going to put my books away, as they're making me feel guilty, and watch some rubbish on tv. 

Plodding on

I've been good, and have spent the evening doing the transcription activity for my next assignment. It would have been incredibly difficult and time-consuming, but a fellow student shared a tip on facebook - she said that if you download something onto Windows media player, you can play it back at half speed. This not only made everything so much easier, it also added to the entertainment factor, in that the speaker sounded like a very drunk Ozzy Osbourne. 

So now that's done, I have to read the rest of Carter's book. I love reading and I'll give anything a go (I read Twilight, for goodness sake), but this book is a real struggle. Carter does love words, that's for sure, although several people have pointed out that he's not so keen on commas. One teacher doing the course said she has to go through each chapter adding punctuation before she can read it properly. It's given me a better understanding of some of the struggling readers at school, though. I've read two chapters so far, and I've read some sentences two or three times, but if you were to ask me what I'd just read about, I wouldn't have a clue. Most of my OU courses have made me feel a bit brainless to start with, but I think the feeling will last a tad longer with this one. I also feel a bit peeved as it's not really about language per se, but rather about how it's used creatively. Oh well, I've only got five more assignments and a final essay to go. Sigh...

Another thing that's making the reading of Carter's book so tedious, is that it's made me think of a different book that I now need to read. Sometimes, something will remind me of a book or story, and I have to read it immediately. For example, Son Number Two and I were watching a Bear Grylls thing on people who got stuck in a canyon, and I then had to go and re-read the 127 Hours book (Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Much better than the film, but you knew that.) Carter spends so much time explaining terms he's made up, that it reminds me of the Lemony Snicket books, A Series of Unfortunate Events, in which 'complicated' terms are explained by the author saying, 'A phrase which here means...'. 

The best children's books ever

As much as I like a huge number of children's books, I have to say that A Series of Unfortunate Events has to beat every one of them. I read them all (there are 13) to Son Number Two as they were published several years ago. We would finish one, laughing and sniggering every evening, and then have to wait several months for the next one to come out. They are great books for adults to read to children - they're like Pixar films in that the bits that appeal to the adults go right over the children's heads. They taught my son so many bits of useless information and more about apostrophe-use than any English teacher. If you're a teacher, you have a duty to read them to your class (you can link them in with the Tudors somehow...).

As I know that I have to finish Carter's book, I'm bribing myself with a non-stop read of all 13 books, from The Bad Beginning to The End. I'm still not optimistic, though.

Being creative with chainsaws

I think I'm reading the most boring book on earth. It's the set book for the first half of my OU course on language, and is meant to explain how 'everyday' language-use is creative. My Facebook group for the course is coming up with some very creative uses for the book. I'm not into burning books, but I'll make an exception for this one. 

One student thinks the book is wonderful, though. After comments of disbelief, she told us that it's cured the insomnia she's suffered from for three years. I am finding this part of the course boring. The second half looks at creativity in literature, so I'm hoping that'll be more interesting. I've decided that as long as I pass this course, I don't really mind what score I get - I just want it finished. It's made me realise how much I loved my Children's Literature course, which was hard work but fascinating. My next (and final) course will be, I have decided, 20th Century Literature. I want to end on a high, and that'll give me a BA in Humanities with Literature. It also gives me an excuse to buy lots of books. 'Yes, honestly dear, I need all of these for my course....' Actually, what drew me to that course was the fact that the reading list includes Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. That was the first 'grown up' book I read, aged about 9. (I followed it with Stephen King's Carrie, and was more frightened by Mrs Danvers than by buckets of pigs' blood.)

The assignment that I should now be working on involves transcribing a clip from an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage, which is apparently a science/comedy chat show. What good this will do me in future life, I really don't know. People who have started have said it's taken them over two hours to transcribe five minutes of chat. That means I really should get a move on, especially as we have to add 2000 words on how the transcription shows creative use of language. But it doesn't have to be in until December 5th, so I'll examine the creativity in some books first. People on Facebook can be very creative as well, so I'll peruse that site for a while. Purely for educational purposes, obviously. 

Actually, I wasted too much time on Facebook this morning. Someone had posted this: 

and I spent rather a long time reading all of the comments. 'To Kill a Mockingbird with a Chainsaw' was one of my favourites. A father had just finished reading to his child, so his result was 'The Cat in the Hat Comes Back with a Chainsaw.' I see an 18 certificate movie in that one.... Mine would have been 'Language and Creativity with a Chainsaw', which would make it a far more entertaining book. 

What else? It's Children in Need time again, so I had to ask the class for fundraising suggestions. We always have a non-uniform day, but the question was: what theme were we going with? (Why do I always get asked to do these things while the teacher escapes??) Anyway, we had some inventive suggestions, some of which I liked very much, but were rather impractical. I loved the 'dress as your hobby' idea, and the 'dress as a member of staff' idea, although that may have been too much of an eye-opener. One year 6 suggested an animal theme, but went too far by saying we should then organise a safari on the school field, in which the juniors preyed on the infants. We have predictably gone with a pyjama day, or dressing in 'odd' clothes, which one of the children said I do anyway. Cheers.