Oops

Another day, another day of lazing around (well, if you call pulling up weeds, putting in plants, and doing a mile on the elliptical cycle being lazy).

I am now sitting here, half-watching TV and listening to music...I am also participating in a fic-writing challenge with a friend. I have managed over 700 words in 30 minutes thus-far and we are going to be doing another 30 minutes shortly, hopefully this will signal a finish to the story :)

Studying will resume tomorrow - I hope! Well, actually no hope about it - I have just over 2 weeks until the exams and I NEED to revise. I am putting it off after a hellish week last week doing the assignment.

Lazy

I've been lazy this last few days - well, not lazy exactly, but doing job searches and going to agency registration interviews etc - rather than hitting the books.

I have a load of stuff on both PCs to look at - so I will be hitting the books tomorrow (promise) and then the real hard work starts.

I have a job interview in London next week (4hrs on the train in total) but the job itself is local, so I will lose another day of study then, but I will have to make up for that in the days before and after...I am keeping my fingers crossed that this interview goes well...I really want the job - not only because it sounds interesting, but because the money is decent, AND I will be back at work again (after three months of listening to granny going on and on about my not having a job! I didn't exactly ask to be made redundant you know!

It's out of my hands...

It's been posted. Yesterday I printed it and put it in the envelope (along with the compulsory submission form that goes with every assignment) and then this morning Granny took it to the postbox when she went to get her newspaper (okay, so they had sold out, but at least it wasn't a totally wasted journey). I am now sitting here with a pile of books beside me (one side text books, the other smutty books about sexy highlanders from the 1500s!) contemplating how exactly I am going to go about starting the revision that needs to be done. I do know that come Wednesday when I have an interview over in Hove about a job I applied for last week I will also be purchasing a mic and some CDs so that I can record poems onto CD (Erin pointed out that this is how we have always effectively learned song lyrics, and she's right!).

I have just had a letter about the day school for the revision (talk about cutting it fine...the course is only 9 days before the exam itself), but I am thinking about going. The course will likely come in really handy as I am totally useless when it comes to revision and the taking of exams...and I really need to get a good grade on this exam because of my poor performance where the past TMAs have been concerned!

Oh well, the first day of a new week and I am starting to get a bit nervous about all the things I need to know, but I am determined that I will get there. I have to!

Celebrations

It's just gone 5pm on Saturday - aka Day Five - and I have just saved the final draft of my essay. To say that I am ecstatic would be a huge understatement. The essay - after much reworking - is just under the 1500 word maximum (16 words) and I am happy with how it has turned out.

Tomorrow I will begin the revision, but for the rest of today I am going to relax, read rubbish and maybe even break into the box of uneducational and (for this reason alone) entertaining books that were delivered yesterday. I promised myself that I wouldn't touch them until the essay was a part of my educational history (well until it is marked at any case).

I asked a friend (who is not doing the course, or even in this country) to cast an eye over it to make sure that everything was how it should be - a few minor errors were discovered but that was it - and now it is all ready to be printed and posted. Come Monday the essay will be out of my hands, and my grading (unfortunately) will be in the hands of my tutor.

So now it is on with the reading pleasure and then the revision - I am actually on schedule (last year I struggled) and I am more than a little bit relieved.

Day Five...

Well, the essay isn't finished yet, but it is over halfway done. Having decided upon the characters I managed to write over 1900 words of planning and observations, which has actually made it much easier to put the final essay together. All I want now is to finish it, proof it and send it to the tutor (the sooner I finish this the sooner I will be able to move on to a new tutor in a new course - I live in hope that the new one will be better than this one has been).

I have written almost 900 words - and while this will mean I require clever editing to write about the characters from The Rover, I will do my best - it will also mean that I will be able to edit and take out a lot of irrelevancies about the Cheapside characters (I was very wordy about them, that's for sure!).

I feel quite proud of what I have managed to achieve. Granted it has now taken me over the four days that I hoped, but I have admittedly been rather lax in writing, spending much time reading odd bits that are of no relevance but hold an interest for me.

With any luck I will be able to post later on today that I have completely finished the assignment and it is ready to be printed :)

Day Four...

Well, it's day four of the essay from hell "Socially Marginal Characters blah blah blah" and I finally have decided upon the characters that I am going to write about, and I have managed to write something about three of the four so far. Granted what I have written is notes and observations thus far, but what I have written totals up to 800 words - which in itself is an achievement.

I have even more motivation now to get the essay written and edited - this morning I received a delivery of nine totally frivolous books. None of them have anything to do with revision or Shakespeare or Aphra Behn, in fact they are totally pointless when it comes to academia, but they may just help me to maintain the few ounces of sanity I have left after nine months of this course (hmm, wonder if that's nine books for nine months?).

I am going to put my nose to the grindstone today, because I have already told myself the books are a reward that I am not allowed to touch (although I did already to unpack them and put them in the laptop bag at my feet), until I had finished the essay completely (or at least until I had finished the draft that I was going to leave for a day before printing!).

With any luck the next post will say "FOUR DAYS AND FINISHED", but I am not holding my breath right now...still have chores to fit in, and sitting on this chair for the last three and a bit days has meant that I haven't done my normal exercise routine (well, normal in that I started it four weeks ago, and until this week had managed to maintain it perfectly!). Once this is finished I have to get back into the routine of exercise again and reading pleasant un-academic books.

On a totally unrelated note...what the hell happened to the weather? It's horrible!

Day Three...

I would like to say "and all is well" but that would be one huge (a whopping great, in fact) lie. I am still struggling hugely with my assignment, but at least now I know which characters to write about from both Henry V and The Rover. With any luck, now that I have that basic decision made, I will be able to get something written and then refined before the end of the weekend (the assignment has to be posted by Tuesday in order to arrive by Thursday).

I am keeping my fingers crossed that all goes well with this particular assignment as I have just enrolled for year 3, a course (luckily) that doesn't have an end of year exam, just ongoing assessments throughout the 30-odd weeks that the course runs (from end-September 2007 to mid-June 2008)...one more course down will take me one year closer to reaching my goal. This next course is 20th Century Literature, with plays by Berthold Brecht and novels by Virginia Woolf and Phillip K Dick.

One thing I do know is that I have no plans to stay up until 6am this morning (it is already Thursday here after all) like I did on Wednesday. Now that I have everything outlined I will start to put it together tomorrow, analysing the characteristics, comparing them with the characteristics apparent in other characters from Henry V and The Rover.

I know that I am definitely going to be using the voucher for an Indian Head Massage that my sister gave me for my birthday once the nightmare that is the assignment and the revision for the exam is over.

Even more...

I am still having problems with Henry V and The Rover. It feels as though my brain has developed some kind of block where the studying is concerned. I don't know what it is about this particular course but I have found the whole thing to be a rather unpleasant experience. I just have to get through this last TMA and the exam (with a decent enough grade), and then I can move on to the next one with a clear conscience.

Luckily I have managed to find some wonderful help in the people on the boards at the OU - just a shame my tutor hasn't been in any way co-operative or willing to offer advice.

I feel like I have been working my butt off for months and as yet have nothing much to show for it :( but I have faith in myself and the fact that eventually I will get there.

The Rover...

I am very tempted to just scream and say "okay, I give up" right about now. It's nearly 1am and as yet I have 10 words of a 1500 word essay about 'Socially Marginal' characters in Henry V and The Rover. Prior to this assignment (well, the course really), I hadn't heard of Aphra Behn and her plays...and while part of me is wishing I never had, I realise that The Rover isn't my problem, it's Henry V and his decidedly obvious lack of 'Socially Marginal' characters for me to compare the glut of the characters that appear in Aphra Behn's work. I keep on hoping that I have misread the question and we are meant to write about Othello...but alas, that is not the case.

In maybe a week I will be relieved. Sure, revision-time will have begun, but at least I won't have to think about 'Socially Marginal' characters again for a while!