Foreign Perspectives

My grandparents on Mum’s side were from the Killinchy area originally. Although they moved to Belfast in the 1920s, they still rented a cottage just outside Balloo village, moving once or twice and by the time I was born they were in a cute little thatched cottage on the top of the first hill out of the village.

We spent from two to four months a year from the 1960s through to the early 1980s and it always felt like home. Each summer, we’d basically up sticks and move to the country. Gone was the electricity, gone was the mains water in the kitchen and gone was the indoor loo! Still, it was nice and I managed to get through an awful lot of reading there over the years.

In 1969, we paved the front and as part of that Dad put a little square of plain cement so that I could put a handprint, footprint and some details for posterity, all of which were still readable up to a year or two back. But no more, as we found out when we called by last week as a big weed has grown through the little square. The flush toilet arrived in 1974 and comes with a fetching string vest pattern all around the septic tank courtesy of the vest my Dad was wearing that day. The thatch became increasingly difficult to maintain as the thatchers are dying out and it was replaced with a corregated iron roof sometime in the 1990s I think.

It’s seen better days for sure but is doing pretty well for a cottage that was built over 150 years ago.

However, the flush toilet has now gone as the garden has been bulldozed for the construction of a new bungalow.

The cottage is still there for now, but probably not for a whole lot longer.

I’ve been reading over some of the S207 (physics) and psychology (mostly DSE212) samples that I’ve collected over the years to try and reach a decision between E102 (child psychology) or S207 (physics) for next October.

This October is my chance to top up my “miscellaneous interesting courses” degree to the point where I could claim it and thereby leave it while I, perhaps, head off to do a masters. So, I need a course that will fit into that timeslot.

Both physics and psychology go well with the courses already in the degree which currently has 70 points chemistry, 60 psychology, 60 physics and 30 history so nothing really to choose between them on that score.

I’ve only got the introductory sections of S207 but have bits of a course that follows E102 so it’s not really a like for like comparison. In practical terms, I’ve got the more interesting bits of the psychology to read and those bits come later on in physics.

I may have to get a coin out 🙂

The family used to go to Portrush every Easter Monday when I was a child and we’ve restarted that tradition since getting back from France.

Over the years lots of things have changed but not really that much in Portrush. It takes a lot less time to get there these days not so much because the roads are better but rather because there are fewer people doing the trip which is very noticeable in terms of the lack of cars there relative to yesteryear.

Barry’s, the entertainment complex, seems hardly to have changed at all. Aside from two newish (a number of years old) outside rides for the kids, not much has changed. The roller-coaster and dodgems seem pretty much identical and electronic games have largely passed it by.

One thing that did change for a brief period was the arrival of the Dunluce Centre but that’s closed down now as indeed have several of the non-chippy food outlets which had arrived a few years back.

Since I’ll have completed my Life Sciences degree, the focus moves temporarily to my “miscellaneous interesting courses” degree which I’d like to top up to the point where I could claim it which means adding at least 20 points at level 3 and 80 points overall.

I’d originally had Geology (S276) on the list but now that I’ve read through the pre-course material for it, I don’t really find it that interesting so, at the moment, it’s off the list of possibles for October.

Other options include The physical world (S207) for which the first book is available online free, so I’m going to work my way through that and see what I think of it. Upsides are that it sounds really interesting and presumably would make my Planetary Science course easier going when I get around to it. Downside for this is that it’s one of the courses that are billed as a major undertaking. It’s a 60 pointer so that would take me to 280 points by itself.

Then there’s the new Introduction to childhood studies and child psychology (E102) which is one of the options for my proposed psychology degree and thus moves that along. Upsides are that it’s level 1, four TMAs and an end of course assessment ie it sounds easy going. Downside is that it’s a first run of the course and the OU have a bad reputation with first-run courses. It’s a 60 pointer too so that also takes me to 280 points.

I’m also considering Empires 1492-1975 (A326) which is essentially the follow-on from my Archaeology course from a few years ago. Downside of this is that the OH is also planning to do this and as our approaches to study are totally different, that sounds like a recipe for some conflict.

Coupled with one of those I plan to do Chemical change and environmental applications (S345) which is 20 points at level 3 and thus gets me to the required 60 points at level 3.

Chemistry assignments always take me ages to do, so I thought it best to make an early start on the end of module assignment and avoid last minute rushes.

Since the external examiner required that the assignment was issues three weeks before the cut-off date, that meant that it turned up on March 21st this year with the cut-off date being April 10th. So, three weekends to work on it as I keep weekends for assignments.

At nine questions, it was pretty much the same as a normal assignment, albeit with more questions and covering the entire course pretty much in sequence. So there were three questions on the first, mainly biology, book, around 6 or 7 from the second, mainly chemistry, book and several from sections of the course presented as separate texts (i.e. unit 4 and the McMurray book extracts).

In practice, finding the information to answer some of the questions proved rather time-consuming as there’s no overall course index and unit 4 and the McMurray extracts are easy to forget about after you’ve worked through them. So this year one particularly easy question took a number of people ages to find the relevant information and some were even talking about not answering it at all.

Overall, it covered the course quite thoroughly and helped what was previously fairly unconnected information to make sense as a whole. Unfortunately, as this is an examinable component we won’t get any feedback on our answers which seems a shame as it’s the one piece of work where the course really came together.