Must stop volunteering for things

It couldn't be put off any longer. I have started the next RE assignment. There are three 'tasks' to be done for the course. The first was an easy form-filling and research exercise, and I could choose from a variety of options for the second. Most of those options entailed planning a series of RE lessons, either on paper or as a 25 slide-long power point (I don't know any child who would be awake at the end of that sort of lesson). As our RE-centred half term has been and gone, I went for the essay option. So I have to write 2500 words on 'Where do people look for guidance on how to live their lives?' Not too bad a focus, but it has to relate to Hinduism and Humanism. I know that the Open University has a '10% either way' policy on word-counts, but don't know the policy for the RE course. I have a feeling that 183 words won't cut it, though. 

I have plundered my bookshelves and found a surprising amount of relevant material. (I'd forgotten that I was given a copy of the Bhagavad Gita by a random guy in town - he obviously knew which path I would follow better than I did...) I have read chunks of The God Delusion and managed not to hurl it across the room. I have been mightily side-tracked on the internet and got caught up in a discussion on 'Do people only do good things because of religion?' on a Humanist website. 'You don't have to be religious to be a good person,' said someone. 'In the absence of a god to please, would you become a thief or murderer?' I know one boy who probably would be. Actually, he manages to believe in God and still pilfer anything lying around in the classroom, so I'm not sure how he's going to square that with Him Upstairs. 

Anyway, I have made a start. The first paragraph's been written, and I always find that the most difficult. I am surrounded by piles of books with post-it notes sticking out of them. I have various bits of paper with pink highlighting. So, really, I should be working. I have a counselling assignment due on June 16th, which is about relating two newspaper articles on depression to our text books. (As one article is from The Mirror, I've kind of written that off as deeply suspect already.) 

Tomorrow (which never comes, I know) I will carry on. They say that if you get stuck, you should just write anything and it'll get you in the right frame of mind for working. I will start by typing 'I will never volunteer for anything, ever again.' 

Don't mention the war

Because I am meant to be doing an RE assignment, I am spending far too much time on Facebook on things totally unrelated to study. I now know that I will spend my first half million from my best-sellers on a watch which shows the planets' orbits in real-time (see here). I also know that yesterday was, apparently, World Turtle Day. The 'What career should you actually have?' quiz on BuzzFeed says I should be a humanitarian, so that's okay. I obviously chose the correct things to take to a desert island, and the right city to live in (even though I've never been to Cape Town). 

Scrolling through pages of facts and opinions, the one thing that stands out is that some people really are offended by an awful lot of stuff. And they like to tell everyone about it. There was a newspaper article this morning about a church near here, which had to remove a sign because it offended one person. The sign said, 'If you think there is no God, you’d better be right,' with flames underneath the message. I would have been more affected if hell was represented by pages of quadratic equations, but I actually thought it was quite amusing and in no way offensive, even from the point of view of a practising sinner. 

There are too many things that we're afraid to say or write in fear of offending someone. I don't mean deliberate racism / homophobia etc, but remarks that someone will skew to make offensive. 

It's probably wrong of me, but I get a bit of satisfaction when the 'That's offensive,' comments start bringing out the inner teenager in people. I like a page on Facebook called 'I f*cking love science' (yes, I can see the irony in what I've typed...), and it's full of amazing science-related stuff which has actually taught me quite a bit and has added an extra bit of wonder to things, but there are lots of whines about the 'offensive' title of the page. Here's a copy of one example:

• 'I really do wish you folks would eliminate "f*cking" in your site. It just sounds too sophomoric and gratuitously crude for me to re-post.  

• 'Get over yourself.   

•  'Don't look then, you precious snowflake.'

• 'That's too bad then.' 

• 'I agree. I have wanted to post a few items but I did not because of this.' 

• 'Copy and paste, people. Copy and paste.'  

• 'Feel free to feel smugly superior for not swearing if that is your pinnacle of human achievement, but many others disagree ~ considering a rich and full spectrum of emotion represented by various intensifiers to be a useful linguistic tool, and the discovery of new insights into how the universe functions to be closer to the pinnacle of human accomplishments.'

•  'In other words, f*cking deal with it u absolute bender.' 

Forgive me if that made me snigger. 

I know we shouldn't go around purposefully upsetting people and being thoughtless, but when some deliberately go out looking for things to be outraged by, I have little sympathy. Be outraged by starvation and famine, child brides and war, not the way someone has said something. 

After having probably wound up a few people with that, I'm now off to not do any work. Like Son Number Two, who is upstairs shooting zombies, I will be starting my homework 'tomorrow'. Or sometime.  

Suffering And Trauma over for another year

The SATs tests have finished, and the year 6s are as high as kites. The children have spent each morning this week sighing and groaning over maths and English tests that are used to put them in the correct streams in high school and, incredibly, to predict their GCSE results in 5 years' time. 

Early on Monday, some of the children realised that, although they've been doing practice papers for the past few weeks, they didn't actually know what 'SATs' stood for. They sat there, staring at each other and saying, 'Ummm... errrmm... what about... no, I don't know.' 'I bet it's got the word "test" in it,' suggested one, eventually. It didn't give me great hopes for spectacular test results. 

Ms Fab, Mrs GSOH and I had to read maths test questions for some strugglers, which is something I really hate doing. I feel so mean, just reading the questions out and having to answer all of the children's panicky queries with, 'I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to tell you that.' I try very hard to use telepathy: 'B is 45...' I think, hard. 'It's 45, write 45... oh, dammit....' I really must work on my psychic abilities. 

Actually, what I should be working hard at is my OU course, but it's not happening yet. I've registered for my October module (religion and controversy - yes, I really did make a decision), but I keep thinking about that week off at half term and how I'll catch up then. I'm sure the enthusiasm will return once I make a proper start. Hmmmm........

And now for some good news...

I've spent the past week waiting for the phone to ring. My dad's bone-scan results were meant to be back last Wednesday, so I've had to resist the temptation to phone him at hourly intervals to see if he'd heard. 'We will phone you as soon as we hear,' my mum told me. In other words, go away and stop pestering us. 

They're busy selling their house at the moment, so an over-anxious daughter is an added annoyance. They're fortunate in living on the edge of a nearby town - close to the town centre in one direction and walks through parks and woods in the other. And five minutes away from the hospital, which was very handy when the children were turning A and E into their second home (dislocated fingers from flying cricket balls, photographic chemical spillages, broken collar-bones, and so on. If you have children, I'm sure you went through it, too...). So, my parents put their house on the market, and within a week it had been sold. It helps that the place is like a show-home, unlike my house which is bookstore-meets-overcrowded-bric-a-brac-shop. 

Not mine, unfortunately. Mine are

stacked sideways with additional piles on 

the floor. 

They're downsizing, so I've had offers of chairs, a bread machine, a double bed and a really annoying uncle who keeps appearing with bags of washing. I've said yes to everything except the bed and the uncle. I have enough ironing of my own to do, without adding his. 

Anyway, I got a phone call yesterday. My dad had just opened a letter which said his cancer had not spread to his bones, so he's able to have a combination of hormone treatment and radiotherapy. Sighs of relief all round. I owe a huge thanks to friends who have supported me and kept me sane over the past couple of months. And I think my dad now feels he can stop writing his bucket list and concentrate on living. 

More good news: Mr Chaos is, touch wood, moving in over the road. It'll be good to have him around, and The Husband is already trying to work out how to fit him in to the Cricket Club quiz team. 

Another thing: I have done some work. The first two bits of work for my RE course have been submitted, with the first getting a favourable response. I've only just e-mailed the second bit, so am waiting to hear about that. I really must crack on with the counselling course now...

And... I've made a final decision on my next OU course. The RE course has renewed my enthusiasm for the subject, so I'm going for one on religion and controversy, which starts October. Then I'll only have one more short course to finish my degree. Then what? No idea, but either more study of some sort or writing. The Daughter wants me to write a book, and I have some ideas that went down well on my OU course, but I don't know if I have the courage to take it further. Time to start looking at Masters degrees, perhaps?



Photo courtesy of Mr.TinDC at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_t_in_dc/5323104963
  

I'll just do this first...

Apparently, my new RE course has started. When I filled in the on-line self-assessment and it asked when I'd like to start, I stupidly put, 'As soon as possible,' not realising that it would be read immediately and that would be translated as 'tomorrow'. The 'world views', as they call them, that I've been allocated are: Hinduism, Judaism, Humanism, and Philosophy and Ethics. It seems that Ancestor Worship and Cargo Cults are not really mainstream enough to study.... 

I had to give lots of reasons before I was allowed to study Philosophy and Ethics. You're only normally meant to include it if you teach A level students, but I told them how much the year 6s love a good argument debate, and how we sometimes spent lunchtimes disagreeing with each other in a more or less constructive way, so I was allowed to do it. Ms Fab has also decided to do the course, so it will be fun to share procrastination techniques.  

My OU course began yesterday, and I've done very well at avoiding the website so far. I have done some work towards it, in that I read the book as soon as it arrived, and the first week's activity is 'read chapter one and watch this video'. I've also posted on the forum, so I'm not being totally bad. Not yet - it's only week one. 

We have a long weekend, with it being a bank holiday tomorrow, so I could possibly do some proper work then. Although I have started a new book, which turns out to be the first in a trilogy, so maybe not. I saw a trailer for the film Divergent and it looked rather terrible, but I remembered that Son Number Two had the book in his room, so thought I'd give that a try. It's actually a rather good book, and he's got the second and I may sneakily order the third so, sorry, I'm rather busy at the moment. 

Just need to finish a few books first...

I find I'm using the avoidance techniques that Son Number One used when doing 'revision' for his exams. I always have the OU web page open on the computer, so when The Husband walks past I can quickly flick to that rather than Facebook. It's not that I don't want to do the courses, I just don't want to do them at the moment. When there's housework to be done, that's when I'll do coursework.

Image courtesy of tigger11th/FreeDigitalPhotos.net