At Page 124! Thank God!

Well, after my last homicidal post you will be glad to know I have calmed down quite a lot and managed to make a helluva lot of progress since then. One other factor I didn't take into consideration last time was that Week 12 has absolutely nothing to do with TMA4, so that has shortened the amount of reading to be done before then. I'm still mad at the utter discriminatory nature of the planning in A103, but I'll use tonight's tutorial to draw attention to this and seek solace from others in the group.

I have to say...Marwick's writing is soooooooo boring in weeks 9 & 10. Yes, there are plenty of events in the French Revolution period we all need to take stock of but why waffle them out so to 70+ pages? This was why I was frustrated so much last week - he writes too densely for the time we have left in this block and it's tempting to just chuck the book out the window to go off and do something more fun. Luckily, he's picked up the pace for Unit 11 - Rousseau's 'Social Contract' - and this is waaaaay more interesting! This unit is much easier to work through than the earlier ones I had problems with. Mind you, over the weekend I got some very good news which helped spur me on to stay with it. I think it might be a bit naughty to my tutor to tell you here & now in my public blog what that news was, but let's just say that the elders of A103 were absolutely right in telling me I should contact her and discuss my frustrations. Doing that (& its consequences) has proved successful as I'm now only 26 pages away from completion of the unit and I can now envisage working on the TMA very soon. More importantly, I'm enjoying it again.

Angry? I haven't even started getting angry!

Right. I am seriously pissed off right now with the O.U. at the discriminatory way they have organised their "weeks". But I'll come to that later. First, an update as it has been quite a while since my last post. Last time I was working through my TMA3 & looking forward to our trip across Northern

Europe just before Easter. Unfortunately, I didn't get the TMA3 done in time as I was really unhappy with my efforts for the 2nd part and kept changing it again & again to make it read well on top of answering the question. It was certainly much harder than I had initially thought. Luckily our tutor said I could hand it in over the Easter holiday if I was really struggling. This really helped because I then relaxed and got a lot of foundation work done on the essay before we went abroad.

The trip itself was fun and the break was most welcome. Bonn-Koln-Maastrict-Aachen-Eupen-Waterloo-Lille-Bruges, all in 5 or so days. Our old friend Claudia from eons welcomed us to her glamorous flat in the former West German capital and it was really great to see her again (she's still gorgeous). The Dom at Koln was (as ever) impressive and now free of all its ugly scaffolding at last. I was a bit worried about climbing the tower this time as since the last visit I now suffer from an on-off chest problem but I made it! I wish someone had been there to take a pic a picture of me raising my hands in joy as I completed it! Unfortunately our Kiwi friend really didn't like the narrow winding staircase on the way up and stopped just before the very top. Poor her.

Maastrict, Aachen & Eupen were nice and old fashioned but not much to report on here (the cathedral in Aachen is nice, though). Waterloo would have been brilliant to see except that they now charge 12 Euros to walk up the monument hill when it used to be free (and it was pissing down as well). We declined in disgust at the sheer rip-off and had our ABBA moment in the car instead. Lille still is charmingly French and all that but we had our 2nd disgusting meal there in three visits. Never eat in a cheap "traditional" restaurant there, go to Le Coq Hardi in the town square. Much nicer food. In Bruges I finally go to see the interior of the Church of The Holy Blood. Wow. What use of vivid colours & iconography. Utterly fabulous. Then, home on the ferry. I was kind of depressed it all went by so quickly when we got back. Still, seeing the bright lights of mainland Europe once again was life affirming for me.

Now, here's the story of how I got behind in Block 3 and how it's the fault of the fucking O.U. Folks, they decided in their infinite wisdom that Block 3 must start the week that we hand in TMA3!!! Not immediately after the deadline but starting the Saturday before the deadline. It's crazy, isn't it? There was me desperately trying to get my essay in on time, failing by a day or two, then I have to start immediately on the next part. Even with the Easter break I am now so far behind it's a fucking scandal. Did they think this thing through? Properly? I'm on page 50 of Block 3 and there's still another 150 pages to go and I have to finish all of this well before May 5. And they are giving us these bloody 'essay' exercises in the book which aren't helping me catch up.

I know I am having a good old rant but the thoroughness of the block so far and my slow, slow progress in catching up with it is really depressing me. Which is a shame as I should be enjoying this as History is the good stuff. I'm off now to take the tablets and consult my tutor for some kind of help on this because I can't go on getting angrier & angrier about this injustice. Not good for my studying habits. I am still going to make a formal complaint about the mismatch of dates as I do think that was outrageously unfair timing. Perhaps that'll take the steam off. In the meantime, what the hell am I gonna do to catch up? ;(

Bored, Bored, Bored

It says something that even working hard on TMA3 is failing to shift my absolute boredom at the moment. Life just seems so rhythmless at the moment. It's a good thing that we are meeting up with our Kiwi friend in a few days for the pre-Easter break I mentioned a while back. Sadly, as Alison told me the other night, it's not going to be quite the trek I had thought it would be. We are driving to straight to Koln and stopping off at the other places on the way back..but not for long. Oh well, a change is as good as a rest so I suppose I should be grateful.

Finally got TMA2 last week and ...well I got another B!! But this one counts! I was absolutely delighted and it was a relief to get a good overall mark for the 4 areas we had to write about separately. I was utterly shocked to find that I had done better in the music section than I had in the poetry one! After all that hard enthusiastic work on Wordsworth's "London 1802" and it ends up doing worse than the reluctant quickie answer I wrote for the music section? I was so annoyed! At least that day I took off was worth it in the end! But the best bit was when I got FULL MARKS for the Philosophy one! Alison was blown away that I had managed to get it all 100% right after she thought some of the answers were wrong! Ha!

I had started TMA3 just before I got my result above. The first question was an absolute bitch to start but once I got a great hint fom the OUSA 103 conference I was off. The second part is coming along nicely (at 600 words and the target is 900) but.....well, I'm drifting off a bit. I don't know why. I'm not bored with the subject, I'm just losing the ability to discipline myself and get down to it. It might be that I've been working on this in the living room with all its distractions instead of the bedroom or just the boredom I'm suffering from at the moment. Thankfully our tutor told us upfront that she's going to be away for two weeks over Easter so she'll probably not start marking the majority of our work until after the bank holidays (in other words, she's given us all an extension without us asking her!). That gives me an extra 10 days but I want to get it done soon so I can move on to Block 3. I just hope its good enough, I'm not so certain it is. Mind you I said that about TMA2.