Foreign Perspectives

That’s t reaction of a lot of people when faced with a longish assignment but usually they’re not so bad once you get started into them. From my point of view, I reckon that if I was able to write a 3000 word assignment in Spanish then one in English must be doable.

The key is to plan it out at the outset and then proceed to tick off the sections as you work through your plan. That way it doesn’t seem nearly so large as a straight 3000 words would be.

Anyway, at the moment I’m plugging away with the EMA for the summer school. The results section is taking ages to do as that involves pulling together a number of charts, tables and illustrations that were collected during the week. Moreover, we need to include work from other groups which we didn’t get a chance to look at directly during the week: that’ll be the hardest part I think as it’s always much easier to write about your own work.

Alongside that I need to get the experiment done and written up for the main biology course. I looked over that on Friday and have to collect a couple more items before I can start on that but hopefully will have made some progress during the course of the week. Doing two assignments in parallel is quite hard going but all being well I’ll have made a decent amount of progress on both by this time next week.

By chance we saw a promo for an event during June for the local branch of the Young Archaeologists Club which I took the little guys along to.

That was one based around mosaics which kicked off with a short talk to put them into context before we all got going on constructing our very own mosaic. All the meetings are two hours long which was a little bit short to get the mosaics done so we were rushing a little towards the end but even so have two very nice ones sitting in the house now.

With that behind them they were all fired up to join and go along to the monthly meetings. Between one thing and another we didn’t quite manage to get signed up yet but the next meeting was yesterday at Belvoir Park. Slightly iffy weather meant that the decision to go wasn’t taken ’til under an hour before for us but I’m glad we went. That two hours disappears surprisingly quickly when you’re walking round even a small number of sites so with the remains of a country house, a motte, an ice house and a graveyard in terms of built archaeology and the oldest oak tree in Ireland plus a redwood to consider the event was over very quickly indeed. Interestingly though the little guys have remembered a number of the facts presented along the way so it was a surprisingly good means of education.

We’ve finally managed to get the forms to join so will be getting those off during the week as they’re still dead keen on it. Whether they would think that they’ve an interest in archaeology per se is debatable but they’re enjoying the outings and learning a bit along the way too.

In principle, this should be a relatively simple EMA as it’s essentially writing up the results of various experiments that we’ve already done and with the 3000 words spread over four basic experiments there’s not an awful lot to be written about each one.

I’ve spent the past couple of days making a start on it, first gathering together the notes from the various places, then typing up the list of references and finally getting going with the materials and methods section which is probably the easiest one to do. They were very keen on illustrations so I’ve added the first one already.

The results section is probably going to be the most time-consuming one to do as it’s where all the graphs, tables and most of the illustrations will end up. Actually writing it should be fine with around 200-300 words per experiment. I’m guessing at a couple of hours for it overall.

Next up should be the discussion which could be quite complicated although I seem to have quite a lot of notes about it so perhaps not. At the moment the hardest thing seems to be tying together the various strands of the experiment.

The introduction also looks like being quite difficult to do in that it needs to refer to biological principles, supporting articles and generally to set the background for the experiment.

Finally, there’s the abstract and title which would be a doddle but for the tight word count.

Yesterday was the day that everyone had been told that registration for the summer schools in 2012 would open so lots of people got going early and received the confirmation of their registration.

Snag is that somebody opened up the registrations too early. The arrangements with the various host universities aren’t yet completed. So, they closed registrations around 10am.

You’d think that those who’d already registered would be OK, but apparently they’re going to cancel all those registrations and it’s back to the drawing board for the new opening date of August 31st. Quite why they couldn’t have just kept the existing registrations I don’t know. Financially, it’s going to complicate the lives of a number of people as OU refunds can take a number of weeks to come back and with August 31st being only three weeks off, they may not be received before the new registrations need to be paid for.

I’d been blissfully sailing along assuming that the 2012 OU courses would, at most, move to the non-subsidised European rate ie from around £700 for a 60 point course to around £1500. To have it move to £2500 is quite a shock albeit, so far, only for those studying in England.

The snag is that the end result could be little better for the rest of us as English students make up the bulk of the student population. No, we may not be paying quite so much but it could easily be the case the the OU will fold thanks to the combination of a massive drop out rate and a drastic slowing down of the pace at which degrees are done.

For existing students there are transitional arrangements which basically amount to you continuing to pay the same amount for courses up to 2017 in most cases. To maintain eligibility for those transitional arrangements you need to be taking at least one course per year towards your qualification. It’s best to check the small print if you’re doing anything other than a normal study pattern and there does appear to be scope to do multiple qualifications under the one banner so to speak (eg I should be able to manage both the Life Sciences and Psychology with a bit of care along the way). It may be prudent to mark your courses against an open degree as well as whatever you’re currently doing to keep your options open.

Sadly, it may be that this will mark the end of the OU. At present only 25% of their existing students are straight from A-levels and, apparently, a similar amount who don’t have a previous degree (and thereby eligible for student loans). Which leaves quite a lot of potential students who’d be looking at £1200 for even a 30 point course (vs £400 or so now). For that matter, would many people do a 10 pointer if it cost £400?

For me, it shouldn’t really matter short term as I’ll have finished the Life Sciences by 2014 and should be able to scrape home with the Psychology in 2017 after which, all being well, it’ll be on to the masters. It’s very sad though that in practical terms the OU will cease to be an option for many.