I think, therefore I am a clever bastard!

Following on from my failure on Sunday to even concoct a reasonable first draft on the music question, at one point this week it looked like my resolve in this course was once again to be severely tested . That moment was halfway through our tutorial on Wednesday - it teetered very close to an absolute disaster. We were going through Rupert Brookes' sonnet "The Soldier" which is not an easy poem to dissect quickly and (judging by looks) most of us in the group really struggled with it. In these sessions so far I have been quite vocal and made some good contributions to the debates we've had but on Wednesday I totally lost it. I made far too many assumptions on this bit or that bit of the poem and as a consequence I felt like a total fool when the tutor told me off time & time again. It was horrible. After a umpteenth time of being embarrassed I just shut up and said nothing....and, unfortunately, so did everyone else. The poor tutor just went on and on with her assessment in total silence with just the odd comment from the only two know-it-all students who did say anything.

After 15 minutes of this torture the tutor finally snapped and confronted us. She was bemused not only by the lack of discussion during this session but also in the other tutorials we've had so far. What followed next was a real breath of fresh air. We openly debated the difficulties with the poem and why we said very little in these sessions. I said that getting something out of a complex, unfamiliar work in such a hurried fashion was quite difficult for us as we do it in our own time at home. Also, because the"war poem" was from the other end of the genre (i.e. not anti-war), it was unusual and added to its difficulty. After that, things got much better. People opened up when we continued with the poem's analysis and even I, finally, made some learned contributions.

Well, after last weekend's TMA2 calamity I swallowed my disappointment and moved straight on with the final part of Block 1: Philosophy. Contrary to my pre-conceived notions about the discipline (difficult, brainy, challenging, hard to tackle etc etc), I actually found it quite enjoyable and fairly easy to tuck in to. So much so, that I completed the reading on it yesterday (and yes, I did do the lengthy exercises as well)! The timing is impeccable as this Saturday we've been invited round by a close friend of ours to party at his house. So getting this done a day or so early means I can start the last part of the TMA2 on Saturday morning rather than on Sunday and I can still have a guilt-free good time this weekend! The question doesn't seem too bad either. Mind you, I said that about the music one! Fingers crossed.

For those who tune-in regularly, I'll be at this TMA2 hammer & tongs over the next week as the deadline is March 11th. This will explain my absence in the meantime. Having completed penultimate drafts for both parts 1 + 2 I'll be trying again the music question on Monday and then polishing off all 4 parts by Thursday in time to post it to the tutor. Wish me luck and I'll speak to you soon.