AA100: The Beginnings.

I feel the need to write about my course so far. It has only been officially going for about a month, and my first TMA is due by 14th November, I decided to write as I've pretty much finished the TMA and thus am moving beyond the first stage of this course.

In truth, when I first opened the course book a number of weeks ago I was cynical. I don't really care two hoots about Cleopatra, and once I got to the first half of this TMA, I realised that I most definately do not connect with the source text. You see, it was easier with sociology because there was no connecting with source texts: it was mostly a case of seeing data, interpreting data, writing about it. It's all truth, no lies (as much as government statistics can be truthful, I suppose), and it's less opinion but more telling the truth by using long words.

The Humanities took me by surprise. I don't think that I was expecting to be thrown into the first assignment and told to analyse a text, I thought that would come somewhat later after we'd been taught how to do it. No, we were just thrown straight in there. Fine by me, I'm always up for a challenge - too scared to ask for help, but always up for a challenge. I still have something to prove.

Having been thrown in at the deep end with this course I decided to get ahead, and now am something along the lines of 2 - 3 weeks ahead of where the planner tells me I should be. I was able to do this because we just had two weeks of half term when I wasn't working. Suits me. I think it has helped me to warm to this course, because from the outset I was rather cold - I was seeing the course as Blue, and not the warm orangey pink that the OU want me to see it as. It was not giving off an air of being welcoming, but rather just ushering me in the door to do my worst and then getting rid of me as soon as possible because I was a quitter.

And you know what...I did think of quitting. In the first few weeks, I seriously considered giving it up. I had barely done a single thing on the course, but I wasn't connecting with it, and meeting the people in my tutorial group didn't help - I felt even more out in the cold. A larger part of me wanted to quit than wanted to carry on - but the part that wanted to carry on was, at the time, only doing it out of a "but £600 is a lot of money to lose" ethos and that's a bad way to look at things. Now that I'm ahead, things don't feel so distant and disconnected from me, in fact I feel as though I have embraced them, taken them under my wing, they are my ducklings now and I will nurture them.

I hope that I can continue to nurture them, especially now that I've seen book two. Irish Nationalism, Violins and Gothic Revival Architecture (probably three passionate subjects for me) are all included.