Secret Housewife and her Open University Degree.

If you have been reading my blog for any amount of time ... firstly, thank you!!! Secondly, you will probably know that I have been studying with the Open University for the last 3 years. There is a page that links to every post I have ever written about my study on my tabs up above, from deciding whether or not to do it, through worry and self doubt, through to delight and thorough enjoyment.

Today is a day that I have thought of for a long time - the day that I write my blog and tell you my result ...

I am absolutely thrilled to be able to tell you that I have achieved my B.A (Hons) First Class. I was really hoping for a 2:1 so to get a First is something I can't quite believe!!!

I want to thank each and every one of you who have encouraged me, advised me and been with me on my journey. When I eventually attend my graduation ceremony at Ely Cathedral I will be a blubbering, beaming woman whose heart will burst with pride at achieving something I thought I had failed in my youth. Your support, along with that of my family, is what has kept me going when I doubted myself. Thank you so much.

Open University Degree - Done.

I have officially finished my Open University course. All I have to do now is wait until July or August to find out what class of Degree I have managed to get. I can't quite believe I've finished!!! I sat in the sunshine this afternoon reading The Hunger Games, with no intention of writing an essay or analysing the themes within and felt positively odd! It's been three years since I started the course and in all that time there has always been something hanging over my head ... the next essay, the next set of books to read ...

Now its over and I can relax. I know I have definitely passed, its just a case of finding out how well I have done. The course work on this last module - Children's Literature EA300 - has been very enjoyable and I have gained an average mark of just over 90%. I feel a bit embarrassed to put that out there and maybe I shouldn't ... but actually I am proud of achieving such a good score. I didn't even know such grades were possible!! In some ways I am wondering if I will be found out and my average is just a mistake!!

I have a page just above on the tabs at the top of my blog which is all about the OU and my progress. There is a link to all my posts, in reverse order, from the beginning when I was afraid doing this course would be impossible, to now when I have finished. You can read about the ups and downs, the highs and lows ...

And today I have had my blog featured in the Open University student online magazine as Blog of the Month. How cool is that??? I am so chuffed and I really hope that people enjoy reading my blog posts!! I hadn't been on here for a few days and when I looked at my stats they had gone through the roof, so the link must be working!!!

Anyway, if you are reading this because you are an OU student, then welcome. I hope you like my writing. And you might find my OU posts interesting because actually, although this year has been great, my Open University career has been far from easy. I have opened each pack of shiny new materials with trepidation mixed with excitement and I can honestly say that I have viewed the essay titles with emotion verging on terror!! I have always wondered how on earth I will ever write anything as I have rarely understood a word of the titles!!

Thank goodness for some marvellous tutors and a very understanding husband!! I can't quite believe I will never write another essay ... Now all I need is a fab job!!!

AA316 revision ... now that's a post title that smacks of fun and interest!!

When I have written this I am going to revise. I have an exam in 2 weeks and really ought to be revising now instead of trolling around Facebook, Twitter and various other websites. I seem to have a built in timing system. Without actually working out how much time I need to complete something I just seem to know when to start.

Its as if my inner clock is working everything out in my subconscious and then, when the time is right, I begin. It was like that with my long essay and it worked out well.With my A levels , years ago, it worked out ok too. So I am hoping this exam will be ok too.

Having attended an Exam Revision Day School last week I now know what I need to revise and I spent a few hours downloading info. All I need to do now is force myself to sit and learn it!! 

And I am studying AA316 ... why??? Time for a wobbly moan.

I started essay number 4 of my course today. For those of you who don't know I am studying a level 3 Open University course - The Nineteenth Century Novel. Last year I managed to get a Grade 2 pass in Approaching Literature in my goal to gain an Honours Degree in Humanities with Literature.

This afternoon saw me reach an all time low in my confidence levels. Although the title of the essay is quite a promising one - looking at how the critical essays in the course book can help us understand the relationships between men and women in Germinal and Far from the Madding Crowd - I am finding it very difficult to get into.

I think that my main problem is a lack of motivation/interest/enthusiasm, closely followed by a lack of belief in myself. I have been ill for a week and in spite of this I have tried to keep up with the work. I have read the books, read the essays and written notes on them. When it comes to getting this thing done by next Friday though I am stuck.

The stuff I have written so far is dross. I just don't have the knowledge levels to be able to write to this standard. Last year I did well. This year I am struggling. Working with the OU means an awful lot of studying alone. There is no discussion, little feedback. The tutorials are frustrating this year. The last one I went to I ended up making myself be quiet because I felt few of the other students were contributing. I ended up thinking 'Why should I give them all my ideas?' I was about the only one who appeared to have actually read the novels we were talking about.

I suppose I should think that in that case those students will be struggling more than I am... but it doesn't work that way.I am beginning to see this course as a 'get througher'. I just need to get through it and do the best I can. But at the moment that is a thankless task.

I am trying to hold down a job that is practically full time at the moment, organise a family, blah, blah,blah. I know - worse things happen at sea. There are people out there who would cut off their right arm to swap places with me. It doesn't really matter if I don't get a great degree. I don't 'need' it. But I want it. I want to be able to teach and right now everything is being thrown in my way to stop that goal.

I tell you what - I will make bloody sure my children don't give up a year off their degrees when they are at Uni. When I look back and think how close I was all those years ago, and yet I threw it all away... What a fool.

Thanks for listening to me moan. Let's hope my tutor replies to my email and I feel better after a good night's sleep.

The Art of the comma - my essay is back.

Well, I got my essay back - at last! And the result was fine. I moved up 2% on my last essay.It is quite frustrating though.I looked at the feedback from last time which said I needed to use slightly fewer quotations and this time, having followed the advice, she tells me I need to use slightly more! And the main feedback was an obsession with comma placement.Comma placement?? I ask you!! I am certainly not a slouch when it comes to grammar, but for goodness sake.... This is a level 3 essay and her main gripe is my placement of commas??!!

I am determined to get it right next time.I shall study her comments and do my best to learn from them. After all, she is a professor and I am a student. I have no doubt that she is absolutely right in what she says, but it is most frustrating to learn that your main failing is whether you put a comma in the middle of a reference, or not!

Now if she had complained about my over use of exclamation marks she might have had a point!!!!!

Anyway, I am glad to have it back and to have raised my score again. I am now half way through the course with only 3 more essays to write, one of which is a 4000 worder. I will not be sorry to see the back of this course. I am back in the mind set of 20 years ago when I was doing my B.A in History of Art. I was so turned off by the total pedantry and pretentiousness of the whole thing.

I absolutely love the novels I am studying, but the work of the critics which we also have to study is just mind numbingly dull.Do they have nothing better to do with their lives than nit pick over literature? I listen to the CDs which are part of the course and the critics taking part in discussions on there just make my bile rise. I find myself talking to the CD player, telling them to stop talking such pretentious drivel...

Ah well. One more year to go after this and then its done - I will have a B.A with Honours. I just need to get those bloody commas sorted...

p.s if you fancy asking anything about this post do feel free to use the video thingamejig on the right!! Thanks for dropping by x

AA316 - TMA04 done and dusted. Thank goodness that's finished - only 3 more to do.

Tonight I am luxuriating in my lap top. I have finished my essay on George Eliot's Middlemarch and the works of various nineteenth century critics and can spend an evening kicking back, drinking wine and watching rubbish on tv.

This was the third essay that I have written on my OU course this year and was 2000 words. Those 2000 words had to be wrung out of me like blood from a stone.I remember looking at the title and thinking 'Bloody Hell! I don't even know where to start!!' I am finding the course somewhat joyless at the moment. I love the set novels, but, good grief, the study of the critics is dry stuff.

The thing I find quite supportive is the OU forum.It certainly makes me feel better to read that other people are finding it just as difficult as I am. Strangely there seem to be different rules for different tutorial groups as far as word limits go. Some have to stick exactly to the limit, others can vary the word count by up to 10%. When you're writing a 2000 or 4000 word essay that's a big difference.

The strange thing is that in the end my essay just seemed to appear on the page. I turned to one of my books and it fell open on a page full of exactly the right information for the bit I was writing.Its like being blindfolded and then pushed down a sticky helter skelter. There is no way of knowing where you are, but gravity pulls you inexorably down the slide. I had no idea where I was going, but I got there in the end.I have no idea what sort of mark I will get but thank goodness its done.

I just need to keep plodding on and I will get there in the end.

AA316 - I will be 104 before I qualify to do anything more than take notes.

I am in the inbetweeny position of having handed in my essay on Jane Eyre, having not started my next essay and having the 'calm before the storm' frame of mind that occurs when I haven't got my marked essay back. At this moment my next essay could be brilliant. My last essay might have been brilliant. Nobody yet knows and the ignorance is bliss.

Of course, underneath the calm exterior all hell is letting loose. I fully expect to receive an even worse mark for the essay I've just handed in than I did for the first one. Whereas last year I was pleasantly surprised and my marks got better and better, this year is proving increasingly difficult.

I am not being humbly modest here. I truly believe the essay I wrote to be a pile of old rubbish. Being in the OU means that one is working alone and this year I am finding it very difficult to keep motivated. I wrote my introduction and was quite pleased with it until I went back a couple of days later, reread it and realised that what I had written was drivel...

The real shame is that I love all the books on my course, but doing the course means that I cannot read them for pleasure. They have to be dissected, analysed, noted. I cannot remember the last time I read a book for pleasure, without having to take notes, read background and critical essays. Its a load of old tosh and I am not enjoying it.

Hopefully things will pick up, but my plans to finish the Degree, do Teacher Training and become a Primary school teacher seem distant and faintly ridiculous. I am not feeling sorry for myself - this is just a statement of fact. I will deal with it, get over it, do my best with the course and hopefully, one day, teach. I may, however, be 104 before that happens.

Essay writing for AA316 and my bad back complaints.

My first essay of the new year, new course is due in on the 2nd of November, or there abouts. I am actually pretty ahead of myself on this course, but I have been putting off writing the essay. I have been mulling the topic over in my head and planning what I need to write, but yesterday I actually sat down and wrote the introduction.

Strange to consider that this time last year I was terrified about how to even start. Yesterday the words just seemed to flow.Don't get me wrong, there will be changes, and as the saying goes, there's many a slip twixt cup and lip. Thinking I have written a good intro is a long way away from writing a good level three essay!

Still, I feel happy to have made a start.

Something that is not making me feel happy is the state of my back.I am trying not to mention it to those around me, but, bloody hell it hurts. I know that its only a muscle proble, caused by digging the stupid allotment and exacerbated by stress.It feels as if someone is digging red hot pokers into the muscles across my shoulder blades. When I move the pain takes my breath away and as I walk up and down stairs at times during the day I am like an old horse, grunting and gasping. Really quite pathetic!!

If it wasn't for the fact that going sick at work is totally out of the question, especially right now, I would just take to my bed and die. As my mother always told me - I have no stamina and a non existent pain threshold.You know what we Brits are like - its absolutely unacceptable to let anyone know that you are in pain. If anyone has asked me how I am I always reply chirpily that all is well.

Well, between you and me, as friends out in the ether whom I will never meet and will never have to face with the embarrassment of seeing you and feeling like a weakling to have complained, IT HURTS!! And not only does it hurt, I want it to stop and I don't want to have to go to work.There. I have said it. Now I will go back in the lounge and pretend all is well, as I swig down 2 more paracetamol.

My shiny new course materials have arrived and I am ready to study!!

I am lying on my bed typing this as I have been feeling quite unwell for the last few days.My post on my holidays was a bit pathetic as I was feeling so rough, but I wanted to get something up there!

Yesterday I received my shiny new box of course materials for this year's Open University course. I am going to be studying AA316 The Nineteenth Century Novel and the box contained plans, calendars, books, specimen exam papers, essay questions.... oh goodness me!!

I am proud to say that I have been reading and taking notes on my set books since my last course finished. I even did between 2 and 3 hours most days around the pool in Turkey. I know this sounds a bit geekish, but I know how hard this course will be and I want to do well.

So far I have read Dombey and Son, Middlemarch, Northanger Abbey, Jane Eyre and have nearly finished Germinal. Next is Far from the Madding Crowd. I have loved all of these books and would highly recommend them as just damn good stories if nothing else. I sat by the pool with tears coursing down my cheeks as I read Jane Eyre - trying to look as unlike a complete nutter as I could!!

I am also proud to say that my blog has been chosen by this website as one of the Top 40 Adult Educational blogs !! How cool is that? I am certainly pleased if a little bemused!!

I have a busy year ahead of me and I know that I am going to have to be very organised, with 2 to 3 hours study each day. Where I will fit that in, working 21 hours a week, running a house and looking after 2 children, will be interesting. I will keep you posted!! I am not alone in my endeavours though. I am putting a link to other students and their blogs on my right handside column.If you are a mature student and would like to be included, let me know... especially if you are doing AA316 or A210.