Recently in English Language and Literature Category

Sure is cold. In here too. I've never been one for staying terribly warm. I'm just skin and bone. However, the heating has just come on.

I was actually writing here to say that in TMA01 of AA100 I got and average of 84. I say "an average" because it was marked in two parts and the average between the two was 84. I'm pleased. TMA02 is what is known as a 'reflective essay', which the student reads the tutor's comments and then rewrites part of their previous submission based upon the feedback. Even my tutor had admitted in the comments that it doesn't need to be rewritten and I simply need to find a part that I don't like myself and take his feedback into account. Wonderful. I honestly thought that I had totally bombed out on TMA01. I've already written TMA03 and it's almost ready to submit, so the short amount of time that I need to pay to TMA02 will be done this week before having the next couple of weeks free for Christmas.

Talking of Chrirstmas...we kind of had our 'Christmas' last night. Well, we exchanged gifts. The Brother and Sister-In-Law visited briefly yesterday to give us our gifts, so The Boss and I decided to give each other our Christmas gifts. I gave him a new Philips Sonicare and he gave me Razer 4000dpi gaming mouse and mousepad. We didn't bother to wrap them up, in fact, they still had their Amazon packaging and receipts in with them. Yeah, we're classy. The Brother and Sister-In-Law gave The Boss Gears of War 2 (try finishing Gears of War before you start this one!) and they gave me the DVD of Equus. I had asked for it, and was rather pleased to receive it. I shall have to watch it soon, but maybe after I've read the play.

My parents have been and gone. I picked them up from the airport and they left here the next day. It's now going to be quiet for the rest of the year. I have to work. Yes the pay is some conciliation for it. It's a few hundred quid that I wouldn't otherwise have and can spend it on Rosetta Stone or something. Yeah, didn't mention that did I? I want to learn Russian and have drawn a blank on evening classes. I am currently considering Rosetta Stone stuff, but it's freaking expensive. We'll see, in the new year. Plus, the train to and from my parents house/London is going to cost around £150. Christmas prices? Nah, that's just the normal rip-off Britain fares. Last time we went to London, it cost us more for the train tickets than for the hotel.

What else, what else? It's cold. So cold. Oh yes, the Spooks DVD(s) went down well with my Father. He kept telling me that I shouldn't have bought it, but then said that he didn't see half of series 6 either, quite how he managed to follow the beginning of series 7, I do not know. But he's even now, and is probably missing a whole series in total. And for Christmas I have got them a Photobook which I ordered today. It better look good, it wasn't exactly cheap. I thought that I had presents all figured out until yesterday when I realised I hadn't ordered a load of vouchers and when I got an e-mail from Snapfish telling me there was only 2 days left to order to get stuff in time for Christmas. Meh. Maybe I'm just getting old and the time is passing me by quicker, but life does seem to slipping by at the moment. Too much work, too much studying, maybe? Too much of wishing my life away so that I can get a proper job and be free of the clutches of funding these courses - finally putting them to good use? Maybe.

This evening, I feel like having, after dinner, some booze accompanied by some cheese and crackers. There's no Spooks to watch (travesty - what will we watch instead?!) and nothing in particular to do. Just relax huddle up on the sofa then.

I believe I have previously mentioned that I'm doing another course. Well, I am. I signed up for it less than a week ago. A couple of days ago I noticed a message on my StudentHome telling me that a particular form could not be mailed as they had run out (WTG!). I wondered why I was getting this message as surely I wouldn't be receiving my materials until January?

Lo and behold! Yesterday a big packet arrived for me with all of the materials for the start of my new course: A210 - Approaching Literature. I flicked through them last night and for a fleeting moment felt "What the fucking hell have I managed to get myself into now?" I don't doubt for one second that I can do it, but do I really want to? I know why I'm doing it, but do I really want to?

The materials...look different. Unlike the very standard ones that I've had for my other two courses where the covers are similar, the layout is similar, the font is very simple and easy to read, it's in colour (DD100 wasn't), it didn't feel condescending at all. A210? Fuck me, does this feel patronising. Everything from the need to have different covers to other courses, to the font in the books which is difficult to read. By the time that the course starts, the materials will be three years old. That's something that the OU should do - standardise all of the materials across every single course.

Today, I almost started on it, but getting home from work a bit late I really had no inclination, nor did I have any to work harder on my current TMA. I'm only about 100 words from finishing it, so what's the hurry? However, I have been leafing through the Course Guide for A210. One thing has puzzled me so far. There's a part on the first page of the Course Guide, it says that this course means "you will be able to proceed to an Honours degree by taking literature courses at levels 3 and 4." Level four? Really? Are you sure? The only thing that I can find about Level Four on the OU are courses that are the equivalent of NQF Level 4, but they aren't OU specific courses. At first, I thought, maybe they're talking about an MA, but no, they specifically state "Honours Degree", so it can't be an MA. Hmm.

Further on it says "you may find occasional references to the old structure, for example in the numbering of the blocks, study guides and audio-visual material, and you should ignore any anomalies of this kind." No, how about you actually re-read, re-listen and re-watch these things and then re-issue them instead of telling people to ignore it. Some people won't read this course guide, some people will forget that bit of information, some people simply won't pay any attention to it. What terribly bad practice. Issue things to students doing current degrees and then tell them to ignore any old mistakes - that smacks of laziness, not lack of money or people to do the reviewing. After seeing this bit, I looked at the date to see when it was last printed/re-printed and it was reviewed in 2006. So, by the time we come round to using it, it will be...ding! Ding! Ding! Three years out of date.

Doing swell so far.

This particular course has an examination too. Lovely. A three hour exam, probably in Cambridge. Out of the six courses required for my degree, it would appear that only three of them have exams. Well that's quite neato. I was expecting all of the Level 2 and above courses to have them. I must have got lucky.

I can do this - I know that I can. However, I feel a bit put off by my experiences recently. Not just the things that I have pointed out above, but also that abject failure of a Day School. Please - I'm paying £610 per course for this. That's £610 of my own cold hard cash earned entirely by me (well, apart from when I get vouchers, and for A210 I didn't have any). I now work solely to pay for these courses, and paying out £610 every 6 months can be quite heavy when you're only working part time, especially when it's near to Christmas. I digress - I'm paying this £610 (surely to go up next year) and am getting materials that tell me to ignore mistakes, ignore things that throwback to old versions, get their level scheme wrong, and to go to Day Schools which don't occur because no - one knows what is going on, thus wasting my weekend.

It's not good, is it? Surely it must be better organised than this? This is, in all seriousness, my future here and a good chunk of this cold hard cash that I'm laying down for it is being pissed away on sub-standard materials and events that don't occur. That can't be right.

The Boss wants me to write a complaint and try to get a little bit of a refund out of the OU for the disasterous Day School. I am tempted. It would certainly help. And yes, I know The Boss is reading this, probably cursing the fact that I haven't written the complaint yet. I was going to ask my parents, when they finally return, for some advice on how best to word it as I am rather lost. I'm an English student, how the fuck am I lost for words? I'll feel guilty for doing it, and perhaps I wouldn't have done it if we had been told what was happening, or even better, had some kind of apology for the screw-up in the days afterwards. Instead, we heard nothing at all - and that's really not good.

It'll all be fine. Fine and dandy, I'm sure.

This week has felt so long. So damn long. But also so quick at the same time.

We've been one member of the department down all week. We've had stupid calls from people complaining about something not working, but when we get there it's fine. It's just...urgh. Today has been particularly long. I went in a bit early as The Boss was away today. I ended up leaving an hour after I should have done, because I spent an hour with some people whom I detest. Yeah, I certainly detest these people. They make me despair. They are so retarded. I am surprised that I manage to keep my calm.

At the moment, I'm listening to an Audio CD from the OU about poetry and the Faber Book of Beasts. It's dull. There was a track with people reading extracts from various poems, and the choice of voice actors was so bad. They were so patronising, or boring. At least get a nice voice that can capture people's interest.

Some of these discs didn't work in this computer when I tried it. Then there was that abject failure of a Day School, and now there's this comatosingly boring Audio CD. I'm quickly losing my fervour for this OU course, and in fact the OU as a whole. These things aren't difficult, or are they? Is there something that I'm missing? Honestly, they have some of the course writers being interviewed either in audio or in video and they are so terrible. You can tell they're either trying to remember a script, or they're nervous. Ugh. It's simply painful and so off putting to have to listen to or watch hours of this painful drivel. Sometimes I have to wonder why I bother watching or listening to these. It's not as though they add anymore to the content of the book. If you do the stuff it says in the book, in the case of this audio CD, read the Faber Book of Beasts, then you'll have come across most of the stuff on the Audio CD. The fact that other people read them makes no difference to me. In fact, I am most put off just by the voices and tones. None of the people on these discs enthrall me. I often end up ejecting them before I finish. They're just so boring.

I really can't wait until February. I should be starting a new course, A210: Approaching Literature. I hope that it will be better than this one, and I can do it properly as it's a Level 2. Then in October 2009 I will be onto am English language course, and in February 2010 Shakespeare. I hope that also in February 2010 I can take my final Level 3 course in order to finish the whole degree. I've become very tired of the pace recently.

Not to mention that my experiences at work are making me wish to move on, and that can only be done once I have a degree. You know...some people just drive me mad. They're so stupid and I have such a small tolerance of them. I wish more people would use what is called 'initiative' rather than making their first port of call our phone number and demanding help. I hate that so much. If they had genuinely urgent problems, it wouldn't be a problem. However, none of them ever have urgent problems. They're all bullshit ones such as something really inconsequential isn't working, something looks bad, something is in the wrong place, they can't get onto Facebook.

1) Something isn't working - 99% of the time it's because they're doing it wrong.
2) Something looks bad - 99% of the it's because they don't know how to use the software and they have the formatting wrong.
3) Something is in the wrong place - as above.
4) They can't get onto Facebook/a website is blocked - you can't get onto Facebook because it's blocked, as that crock of shit should be. As for a website being blocked, it gives directions on what to do if they think it's wrong. How many of them do that? Zero. The majority call us or come in to see us with a really nasty attitude about it.

Well fuck them. We're not here to teach them how to use software. We're here to fix problems, and their inability to use software is not our problem. With that kind of attitude, they don't get any service from us. The longer they continue that attitude, the lower down the list their request goes. Is it difficult to be polite? When people are polite to us, we are polite in turn. When people send e-mails saying "WHY IS THIS PAGE BLOCKED?!?!?!????!?!!!!?!?! THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH IT!! I DEMAND YOU UNBLOCK IT IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!!!!!!!" Uhm...no. Get some manners. FFS.

See why I need a new job? I wholly understand that it's a case of same shit, different view, but if I at least enjoy the job, it might not be so bad.

On another note, I've worked out what to do about missing the recordings of Spooks. I've made a card for Father and ordered Series 6 as conciliation. Let us hope that it arrives before they go home.

The morning of the session is taken up by stuff that we won't be assessed on - The Diva and Stalin. The afternoon however, is. It's about The Dalai Lama and The Faber Book of Beasts for TMA03. I'm going in the afternoon. That way I can get dropped off and we don't need to pay for parking. What confuses me, is that it seems to suggest that the afternoon sessions take it all in within an hour. Now, I'm assuming that it's an hour each for one subject, so in total I'll be there for a couple of hours, just like a normal tutorial.

Part of me doesn't want to go as it already feels like a waste of a weekend, and I was rather looking forward to the weekend being relatively free and easy. Another part of me doesn't want to go because the relevant bit is in the afternoon and that's akin to me working in the afternoon which I simply don't do. And another part of me doesn't want to go because I'm convinced that as it's encompassing four different areas there will be a lot of people there who know even less about the subjects than my normal tutor group do. Oh yeah, and my Tutor isn't going to be there. You see, I'm sceptical about the whole thing. It'll be another two hours of my life where I sit in silence trying to hide my displeasure at stupid questions.

I posed that on Friday afternoon. You could see that I was sceptical about attending. I had every right to be. I sincerely wished that I had not have bothered going.

I went for the afternoon session. I arrived a little earlier than planned, and I joined up with a few members of my tutor group. We went into the classroom to await the start of the next session. We waited...waited...waited...waited even more...the tutors never turned up. One was stuck after a road closure. The other - who knows?

The woman in charge didn't have phone numbers for either of them and when she phoned the regional centre, it was closed. Pfft. Great start eh?

Apparently I missed nothing in not going to the morning session as it was little more than just an overview of the chapters in the book. It would appear that I also wouldn't have missed anyhing if I hadn't have gone to the afternoon session. So that was a massive waste of my Saturday. I'm sceptical about the next day school.

I think, on the internet, this would be considered an

I have a day school tomorrow.

Because one of the guys is off sick, The Boss now has to cover this Saturday. I think the guy has actually been poisioned by his wife such is her...err...desperation. Anyway, yes The Boss is working tomorrow. I had forgotten until late this afternoon that I do in fact have an AA100 Day School. I am not required to attend, but it might be helpful.

The original plan was that The Boss would take me into Chelmsford tomorrow morning, drop me at the University and then come home. Because The Boss now has to work this has been scuppered a bit. Why can't I just drive myself into Chelmsford?

• I don't want to drive into Chelmsford on a Saturday Morning less than a month before Christmas (ew, ew, ew).
• I don't want to have to pay for parking at Chelmsford University (ew, ew, ew, ew).

The second one got four ew's.

The morning of the session is taken up by stuff that we won't be assessed on - The Diva and Stalin. The afternoon however, is. It's about The Dalai Lama and The Faber Book of Beasts for TMA03. I'm going in the afternoon. That way I can get dropped off and we don't need to pay for parking. What confuses me, is that it seems to suggest that the afternoon sessions take it all in within an hour. Now, I'm assuming that it's an hour each for one subject, so in total I'll be there for a couple of hours, just like a normal tutorial.

Part of me doesn't want to go as it already feels like a waste of a weekend, and I was rather looking forward to the weekend being relatively free and easy. Another part of me doesn't want to go because the relevant bit is in the afternoon and that's akin to me working in the afternoon which I simply don't do. And another part of me doesn't want to go because I'm convinced that as it's encompassing four different areas there will be a lot of people there who know even less about the subjects than my normal tutor group do. Oh yeah, and my Tutor isn't going to be there. You see, I'm sceptical about the whole thing. It'll be another two hours of my life where I sit in silence trying to hide my displeasure at stupid questions.

Moving on...Today the pest man was supposed to visit. He did visit in fact. We had a pest problem - some kind of rodent, we assume a rat or mouse (more likely to be a mouse) was trying to burrow its way through our ceiling. Had to be sorted before it chewed through an electricity cable and set the house on fire. I felt very guilty about having to call pest control in, but these things must be done sometimes. We had two visits previously from one guy. This time, it wasn't the guy that I was expecting. I was disappointed. The guy we've had in the past has been very talkative and nice. This guy was nice but not as talkative, he was also much older. He did however confirm us as pest free. That reads as though I am a social animal and that I am lacking/missing conversation. I'm not, in fact I much prefer talking to myself.

Now all we need to do is to coax the maintenance department into filling in the hole in the eves that lets the 'pests' in. Pfft. One day. They came round yesterday to do a different job, then said that they would come back today. They didn't. I assume it's because of the rain, just so long as they do come back on Monday, or at least early next week.

This weekend was looking so promising until I remembered that I have to go out.

I booked the hotel for our anniversary today. Yay. London Eye booked. Hotel booked. Now, what are we going to do while in London? Trying to entice The Boss to an art gallery has proved fruitless so far. Admittedly, I've only had one attempt, but he'll read this, laugh and still give me the same answer I am sure ;)

Sunday should be quiet. I hope. I've lost wherever that train of thought was going. I shouldn't google things during the middle of writing these.

I decided to do this entry in two seperate parts, otherwise it would be too long, and thus here is the part about the tutorials.

The first tutorial was painful. It was in Chelmsford, at the university which I had never been to. I arrived late, which didn't help, I felt like a fuckwit. I nestled down between a couple of people. The tiny room was full, there were at least 15 people there which was a complete departure from DD100 tutorials, where, more often than not, I was the only student to turn up. We went around the room saying who we were and why we were doing the course. I made the mistake of being a smart arse and saying that I was doing AA100 because "I didn't like sociology". My Tutor picked up on that (he agreed that he didn't either), and I made a mental note to take it a bit further at the end of the tutorial. And I did, I think I came on a bit strong and told him in no uncertain terms that AA100 was, from what I had seen so far, just thinly veiled sociology with pretty pictures. He concurred but said that it got better. I hadn't given him a chance. Guilt set in the following day.

As for the people in the tutorial group. I was one of only 2 people in the room who was not doing the course with the aim of becoming a teacher. It made my skin crawl to think that so many people in one concentrated area wanted to be school teachers. I had to hold my tongue, otherwise I would have told them what it's really like being a teacher - just from what I have observed, mind you. I couldn't believe the shallowness, the 'easy-way-out-ness' of it all. It really is like those spoof "Become a teacher" adverts from Armstrong and Miller. I don't just say this because I don't want to be a teacher, and therefore I don't think anyone should do anything different to me: that's just pathetic and it's not that at all. If you want to become a teacher, then fine, be my guest and become a teacher, but don't come crawling back to me when you find it too difficult to cope with, because it's not as though I didn't warn you. I quite fancy the idea of ending up as a University Tutor or lecturer - at least the people I would come into contact with truly want to be there and are not there solely out of legal obligation.

Another thing that I realised from the tutorial was that born and bred Essex people (out of the tutorial group there were only 2/3 of us who were not from Essex) really have no idea of the world outside of their own living room windows. They were openly admitting that they had never heard of a lot of things that they had been reading, even though these are cultural legends. They'd never seen these films or unbelivably famous paintings - where have you been for your entire lives? I was, once again, the youngest person there, so where have these people been for the first 40 or so years of their lives? I truly felt as though I was the only person in the room, bar the tutor (no idea what he was thinking), who had any idea of culture or cultural identity. I know that out of everyone in the room I was probably the one to have most recently been in a classroom setting, but does that excuse the inability to shut the fuck up and listen? No, of course it doesn't. There was no reason why people in that group could not have listened rather than asking the poor guy to repeat everything a couple of times. This was one of the moments that I almost couldn't stifle my disgust and I just wanted to beat people about the head with the text books. It made me realise that, perhaps in a complete paradox, I was both at a very comfortable depth and completely out of it.

The second tutorial - I was softer, much softer towards the tutor, but still pretty steely towards the other students. Only 9 of us turned up this time - was it something I said? It was again one of those moments when I couldn't believe what I was hearing from the other students. The second part of our assignment is to compare two paintings and they were bemoaning this saying that they couldn't do it. In my head, I was screaming. "Look at the two freaking paintings! Write down the differences between them. It's not bloody rocket science", and that is pretty much what the assignment booklet tells you to do, point out the differences. I really felt for the guy this time as people were asking him about it. He even prepared a sheet for us to take home about "Reading Paintings" - helps me, I guess it's going to help those who were bemoaning it. This tutorial, no-one wanted anything repeating, and TFFT. He's got a PhD for fuck's sake, he probably didn't envisage when he stepped up to receive it all those years ago, that he would be spending his future tutoring a load of Essex born and bred, culturally inept monsters who are incapable of listening to or reading even the simplest of instructions.

This all sounds snobbish, that I know and can identify. I probably shouldn't say a lot of this, but I must otherwise I feel as though my brain is going to explode - not that that feeling is in fact any different to any other day of the week at any time of the year. I find my steely, cold resolve and patience often surprises me, I find it amazing at times that I can keep my tongue. I guess I have had a fair amount of experience with that over the years. But, it is beyond me how some people can have such a little concept of so many cultural items and have never seen them. I get the impression I would be one of few people who goes to museums.

There was one fleeting moment in this second tutorial where I felt "I should be doing this. Don't give up". The tutor asked a question and was eliciting responses from us. He got a couple of responses from people but wanted more. I opened my damn huge mouth and gave a response that was a million light years away from the type of answer everyone else was giving. It was one of these moments when the room falls silent and everyone turns to look at you, either through shock, disgust or sheer bemusement. Everyone did just that. There was at least one instance of each of those three emotions. They looked at me like I was a nutjob, an asshat, as though I had been smoking something, and no, they didn't want any of it. He paused. Looked at me straight on. He seemed to be slightly taken aback by it, but he said he would talk to me about it at another time.

At the end of the tutorial I just left. I didn't feel as though I could hang around and talk about it - I was still a nutjob in the eyes of the rest of the students, that was an image that I didn't really want to perpetuate.

In case you're curious, the question asked was about emotions and the colour "red". Other students were answering "Anger" and "Hate". My answer was "December".

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.

Left.

It certainly has been a while. Laziness strikes. Especially after two holidays. I believe that the last time I wrote anything was just before we went away for the second time? MT tells me it was 22nd September, which was the day before. Goodo. Our holidays were nice. Both of them. The second place we stayed had a hot tub and a sauna. I used both. I got the sauna up to a little above 50ºC. I was sweating at that point, but wasn't feeling light headed. I got out because I had been in for half an hour at that point, and I didn't want to overdo it, as it was an infrared sauna. And the hot tub? Well, that was outside, and I used it on our last night there as it was a pleasant evening. I was glad that it wasn't windy - the cover was hard, and if that had blown onto me while I was in there...not good.

The place that we stayed second time round was on a private road. Yeah. A private road that was over a mile from the public highway to the lodge. Good stuff. So quiet. All that we heard was fighter jets and geese. Good stuff - we will return there.

The entire time we were there, I was waiting for my period to start. Did it? Of course it freaking didn't. I have a problem with my periods. It finally started last night, some two and a half months after my last period, in July. Dude, please, sort it out. I would much rather not have any at all. Fuck me, does this one hurt. Painkillers required. If it hadn't have been for the painkillers that I took this morning, I may not have gone to work. It really was bad, I couldn't believe how painful it was. One hysterectomy please, Mr. Gynaecologist!

Then it was time to come back to work, and that happened last week. Eugh is all that I can say about that. I don't like working. Does anyone? Well sometimes I do, but not at the moment.

I need a cup of tea.
[Pause...]

We just seem to have had such a shower of bastards coming in or demanding our help. From the stupid new knob head of department who decided to set his own date on when something must be done by us, and continued to push us for that date, despite our department never agreeing to that date. To stupid retards being handed the items that they ordered, and then saying "I ordered 'blah blah blah'. Err, no you put down "blah blah", you never mentioned "blah blah blah". Fuckwit. And to the dude who must weight at least 30 stone and is such a pompous twat. I can barely stand to look at him, let alone be in the same room as him. He either stinks of BO or shite. Today it was shite. He's worse than the drunk retiree who keeps coming in, twitching and utterly pissed as well as stinking as though something crawled into his throat and died.

For fuck's sake, would a gentle return have been so difficult? We had a nice holiday, and what could have been a nice, quiet return to work was plagued by stupid fucks simply existing. While I realise that the start of term is "busy", it is not just busy for the academic departments. In fact, the start of term would not be busy for the academic departments if any of them had good teachers who did planning during the holidays. They just fuck off to their far flung countries for 8 weeks each summer and do sweet FA. While we, the support staff come in during the holidays, or in the case of The Boss, ends up spending half a day while he is in deepest, darkest Norfolk fixing a problem at work because they just can't cope without him. Teachers have it so fucking easy. Sure the kids can be a handful, but they only work part time, and have about 16-20 weeks holiday per year. While the support staff do not, and we get abused, bitched at, have people try to go above us, and generally get treated like utter shit by these "teachers".

A nice little message to all the teachers out there. Not only: Fuck you, for the most part, but also, you need to realise that without us, you really would be fucked. Treat us with a little respect for once, and you might get good, clean, nice service from people who want to help you. A smile, a please and a thank you go a long way. Stop thinking that you are the only reason that schools exist. You forget - the only reason that schools open after each holiday is because we, the support staff have been slaving our arses off to get 3 times our normal workload finished before you lazy cunts return. As soon as teachers start respecting me, I will return the respect. At the moment, respect is pretty thin on the ground.

What else? Oh yes, I started my course last week. I'm a week ahead of schedule. And I went to the first tutorial last Tuesday. It was in Chelmsford, I was late because I couldn't find the building, and the room was full. There must have been almost 15 people there. I'm used to just me and tutor in the sociology ones. I realised that while I was there, I seemed to be the only one who had any knowledge of, well anything. I know it sounds like I'm blowing my own trumpet there, but as I sat amongst all of these other people (about 95% of whom said they were doing the course because they wanted to be a teacher. FFS.) I realised that this course was the kind of stuff I did at primary school. Hell, Doctor Faustus? - I read the Canterbury Tales in Middle English without a translation when I was in my first year at Grammar school - I was 11!

There were also people there who obviously didn't listen as one particular question about referencing was asked by someone next to me. That person listened and took notes. Then, someone behind me got the tutor to repeat his answer. FFS - seriously. He spoke loudly and clearly the first time round, and the second time he said exactly the same thing. How could that have made such a difference? At times it really felt like being in a class back at primary school. Particularly so when I realised I was the only person understanding a lot of my tutors references to other things in the arts/humanities. I know, that really does sound as though I am three miles up my own arse. But...ugh, I can just feel that subsequent tutorials are going to be painful. Maybe next time I will pipe up with stuff that I know, especially as we should be getting onto iambic pentameters, and Christopher Marlowe.

Maybe it will get better? Maybe some people will drop out, or no longer come to the tutorials? I wish I could skip OU Level 1 courses completely. That way, I could just go onto A210 or U211. It is one of these moments when I wish there was a bit of an OU selective entrance exam. If you can pass to a certain standard, you can begin at Level 2 and get your degree from there. If you can't pass at that standard, you can starting with the groundings in Level 1. Bleh. Just keep reminding yourself, young lady, that it will be over by June.

One of the most boring things in life is having to wait for someone or something to turn up. I missed the electricity meter reader yesterday afternoon, the note in the door said that he would come this morning. I got up before 8am. He hasn't been yet, although it is barely beyond 9:30am. I thought that, as I was waiting around I would muse on a few of life's issues.

Getting older scares me.
I had a mini discussion about this the other day with the Boss. I asked him what age he would like to be if he could be one age forever. His answer was the age that he is now, which is 24. I concurred and said that I would like to perpetually be 22. It's a nice age. I'm not yet "getting old" as I'm not near 30, but I'm not so young that I'm still excluded from doing things. I am a proper fully-fledged adult. It's a nice age. However, later this year I turn 23. Next year I turn 24. In 2010 I turn 25. In 2015 I turn 30. Ugh. Just the thought of being 30 strikes fear into my heart. And to think, this is coming from someone who, mentally, feels about 40.

At the age of 22, I know that I have another 40 years worth of work in me. At the age of 30, I still have another 30 odd years of work in me. By the time we get to what is considered "retirement age" now, I am sure that the retirement age will have been changed to..."never". You retire when you die. That would solve a pensions crisis.

Underneath this rough, and rather sharp exterior is really someone who is quite worried about getting older. Uncertainty worries me. Wow. That's coming from a person who doesn't give a flying fuck about decisions being laid down. It's not uncertainty in terms of "oh, what am I going to have for dinner tonight?" That kind of thing I don't care about. It's not me being worried about how much I will be earning aged 30, or where we will be living, or who we will know, or whether members of my family will still be alive. No no. Nothing like that.

It's the uncertainty of what I am going to do. As ever the student does, I do not know what I want to do with my life. I never have, not truly. I've theorised many a time about what I might like to do, but I do not truly know. I don't think that anyone ever does. They may think that they know what they want to do, they may get that "dream job", and then realise that they hate it - therefore they did not know.

[Slight pause while I make myself a pot of tea...]

What possibly makes it more difficult is that the Boss reminds me on a regular basis that it is a soft, bit of a Mickey Mouse, "arty" degree. Heh. Yeah. Says he, the one who is always asking me on correct English usage!

A large proportion of people who take an English degree end up in secretarial or administrative roles. No thank you. Been there, done that, it made me lose any faith I once had in humanity, and made me realise that a majority of the great British public are a little on the dim side. I'll give that one a miss thanks. But where does it leave me? A good degree in English generally proves that one is good at research. I enjoy research.

Would I take up a research role? Well, there are research roles, and then there are research roles.

There are research roles for large companies, whether that be in their production, testing or marketing departments. The kind of thing where you are researching the same thing, day in, day out. Can you imagine me working in a marketing department? Meh. I don't believe in anything - I certainly wouldn't believe in a "product". Except maybe Twinings Teas. But what research can you do about that? Tea is good. Tea is wonderful. Drink Tea. There you go, research done.

And then there are research roles. The interesting research roles. The ones for television production companies, whether that be the Discovery Channel or the BBC. That would rock my rainbow toe socks. Many different subjects over time. Good shit. And there's another type of research role that falls into the interesting category. That of research in a University. Heh, that would generally require me to take a PhD. Yeah, any PhD that I took would be a crock, lined with 200 pages of bullshit. It would be an absolute crock of shit.

And then when I think about where this degree might lead me, and I become ever more confused and uncertain about the whole thing, I start to wonder if that's the only reason that I'm taking it - to get a job. Of course it's not.

A very shallow part of me is taking this degree in the hope that it will turn me into some cultured, learned, well read, literate polymath. Will it? Will it change the way I think? The way I speak? My sense of humour? My social (in)abilities? Who knows.

I want to do something of consequence in life. I want to read Pascal's Pensees, John Le Carré, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and other frightfully pretentious sounding authors. I want to appear well read. I want to think that I am fairly well read. To look at my collection of books at the moment would just appear a joke. Full of Fry, Wodehouse, Sociology, and Wilde. To some, insipid up to the hilt. Oh well. I can hope that this year, my bookcase (when I finally bother to get one) will start to fill up with the likes of Blaise Pascal, John Le Carré, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Ernest Hemingway. Now let me chuck a few poets in there too, Philip Larkin, John Clare and of course Wilde.

But why do I want to do this? The answer to life, the Universe and everything does not lie in good books. No of course it doesn't you bloody fool, it's 42. You see, I must have learnt from this bloody sociology course, because I have come to what feels like the end and I am no bloody closer to an answer, I am merely getting more fucking questions. Arse.

Perhaps I'm not really meant to know what I want to do? Perhaps I need to do a whole load of things and see what fits? Perhaps I need to make a huge amount of mistakes before I realise what is for me? Then again, perhaps somewhere out of the blue something will fall into my lap which is just perfect? Hmm. I don't hold my breath. I'll keep trying and searching for something and see if anything does just drop. Until then I shall get back to my pretentious authors.

This is an issue that has plagued me for years, quite possibly since I was a child. I have always been quite hard on myself. That is, in terms of self-denial and self-denigration. When at school and of course, like everyone else trying my hardest, I never thought it was quite good enough. Now, doing this OU course, trying my hardest, it still isn't good enough. I'm sure that to most people 80% is a bloody wonderful mark and I know that there are some people who, no matter how freaking hard they try, they cannot get marked at 80% and tend to fall somewhat short. But you know, 80% isn't 90%, nor is it 100%, therefore it is not good enough. I also appreciate that by sustaining a mark at 80% and above I will in all chances graduate with a first class honours degree. Absolutely wonderful.

However, I know that I have it in me to do far better than 80%. I know that I can get 90%, and I'm sure that if I ever do get 90% I will be convinced of my abilities to get 95%. I just know that I have it in me. It is nestled safely somewhere in my brain, quite possibly between the cortex that is attempting to animate my voice some more and the other part that is attempting to release my sense of humour. It's okay now, you don't need to be scared of your sense of humour any longer. But my problem seems to be that I think about it all too hard. A case in point will follow.

This morning, before 9am I was sat at this very desk, using this very computer and staring at a blank Word document wondering where the hell I was going to start. I had my best gormless, or what I really much prefer to call my stupid dumb-fuck face on. I must have looked like a grade A retard. Over the subsequent five hours I went through a myriad of emotions, including dumb-fuck (for me, that's an emotion), through to worried, and then it all subsiding and easing off. And then, an epiphany! All of a sudden, out of nowhere, 1pm occured. Fuck me. 1pm. Earth shattering. And this "1pm" brought with it some amazing prophecies. I watched a couple of things on YouTube (I am becoming far too reliant on YouPube) to take my mind off the essay, and this seemed to change something in me. Immediately, on the stroke of 1pm I reopened the Word document and proceeded to write approximately three pages worth of coherent, logical and almost scholarly prose on globalisation. In fact, in about 20 minutes I wrote a third of the entire essay.

This is not the first time that I have noticed this phenomenon. Many times throughout my life I have found that when I stop thinking about the subject in hand, then I am able to come out with some good stuff. It works for humour, memories and it would appear, essays. My subconscious seems to be far more powerful than my conscious. Perhaps my problem does not stand in not trying hard enough? Maybe I should try less hard than I do? In fact, the first essay in which I got 80% I wrote the vast majority of while half pissed and very late on a Friday evening.

During the forays of my mind, which are far more common than me being totally conscious, I attain some pretty high standards of ideas. Once I become fully conscious again they tend to depart. I am beginning to conclude that thinking is not my forte. I could never be a philosopher. If I were, I would have a permanent dumb-fuck look on my face.

And I am beginning to realise that my mind is capable of far more than I understand. Even just the vast amount of information stored in there scares me. On my current playlist I have 51 songs with words. I know every single word to each one of those songs, I also know every single little nuance of each piece of music. And, subconsciously I have probably taken in all of the information about globalisation that I have read over the past few weeks, I just don't realise it. It's in there, and it's waiting to come out. It will come out when it is ready. I hope that it won't wait until after 8th April, when the essay is due.

I am capable of far more than I could ever imagine. I would probably be capable of a PhD, but I don't think I would ever seriously attempt one. I don't want to push the boundaries of accepted scholarly knowledge about Victorian Decadent literature, poetry and prose. No. I would much rather entertain. Even if it is just a giggle from the Boss. That's better than three letters after my name.

If this were a letter to my future self, aged approximately 25 to 30, I would say:
Stop being so damn hard on yourself. It's not worth it. You will only end up with a poorer relationship with yourself than you already have. Trust me, those little moments of genius are going to be worth hanging around for.

Be what you are, and become what you are capable of becoming.
— Robert Louis Stevenson