Foreign Perspectives

The end of the intense overlap of courses seems to be coming all of a sudden as these things often appear to do.

Yesterday, I finally got around to completing the medicine, molecules and drugs (SK185) end of course assessment. One of the more interesting courses that I’ve done in a long time and one which reawakened my interest in chemistry.

I’ve two more weeks of reading of the world archaeology (A251) course to do after which there will “only” be the final TMA (due in two weeks) before getting going on the end of course assessment for it. That’s one course that I definitely wouldn’t want to even contemplate doing an exam for given the sheer volume of reading that the course entails. Having said that, it’s a course that gives a very interesting view of the development of agriculture, cities and empires throughout the world and over a massive timescale. I’d have preferred it if they’d ran the course over the usual 9 month timetable rather than the rather rushed five month one as there’s a lot in the course that I’d have liked to have had the time to properly absorb.

I also finished the reading for The empire of the microbes (S171) course on Thursday and made a reasonable start on the end of course assessment on Friday and, all being well, should get completed over the course of the next few weeks. Already I’m finding that there is a lot of cross-over with the main biology course (S204) which I’ve just started. Although in principle I could submit the January ECA I’m actually going to do the April one and just hang on to it ’til March when it can be submitted.

In principle that should “just” leave me with S204 (a major undertaking) and TT281 (hopefully a reasonably easy going course) to run through to May. If my calculations are correct the workload of those two combined should be somewhat less than that of the previous couple of months.

Quite surprisingly to me, despite dropping three weeks thanks to that swine flu thing, I seem to be pretty much on schedule once again.

Most amazing to me was that I managed to get the archaeology assignment completed and in on time. Whilst the text is hard enough to keep a handle on due to the sheer volume of reading that’s required, it turns out that the second assignment was relatively easy to do (says he not having the mark back yet). The third one looks like it will be more complicated but then assignments can look impossible to do sometimes before you sit down and make a start on them.

I’ve made another burst of progress with the medicine course (SK185) but really need to sit down and get it finished and away this week.

As far as the reading goes, A251 is on schedule though I need to start the third assignment sometime in the next week or so. I’m on the final couple of chapters of the microbes course which is really interesting and is already helping with the initial stages of the S204 reading which I should be finishing the first chapter of this week (around a month ahead of schedule). I’m planning on pulling out the chapter summaries from the S204 books to use as the basis of my own notes; given the page count involved notes are definitely required for this one.

The TT281 DVD arrived a couple of weeks ago but as the course text is online I can’t start that for another couple of weeks. The added nuisance for it is that the ebook reader only works in Windows which means that I’m going to have to reinstall Ubuntu 10.04 to get VirtualBox operational if I can’t get a PDF copy of it.

Upcoming assignments and whatnot include medicine for the end of January, archaeology for early in February and, I think, S204 towards the end of February  by which time I think the first TT281 CMA should be due and I’ll be needing to have made a start on the archaeology ECA too. The final log-jam is basically in the February to mid-March period after which it’s back to a more sensible workload with just S204 and TT281 with the possibility of S171 continuing in the background up to April (I’m hoping to do it before the end of February).

One of the greatest strengths of the BBC/Open University link up from years back was that you got what would today be called deep links between the two. Thus you got co-productions that could just as easily have been normal BBC documentaries or OU programmes.

Sadly, that deep linking is no longer in place thus whilst the almost glossy brochure approach of Ancient Worlds that recently finished its run on BBC2 would have complemented perfectly the global reach of World Archaeology, there are no links in either direction. In days gone by there would have been at least a mention of the World Archaeology course on the Ancient Worlds website as a “if you’d like to have more information” type of link but instead there’s a reference list to a series of books. I’m not complaining about that reference list as it gives people a way to follow up the subject in more detail if they wish but it does seem a shame that the BBC/OU crosslinking is no longer there.

Oddly, the only linking from the OU to the BBC programme is via the OU course forum and that too seems a shame as a set of DVDs of the programme wouldn’t look that out of place were they to be included with the course. In fact, they would bring the subject to life as they have for me. It’s all very well reading about places like Uruk, but actually seeing the present day ruins is quite a different experience.

I find that we don’t really think of when the kids go back to school after Christmas until it’s time for them to get the school bags packed. So it was a nice surprise to find that after we’d them all packed for today that they don’t actually go back to school until tomorrow.

That gives me a little more time to play with too. And I need it too as I’ve only just started the archaeology assignment which is due by noon on Friday. I’ll get an extension of it as the delay is basically down to the combination of food poisoning and some kind of flu-thing that felled me for getting on for three weeks. Somehow I don’t think that I’ll hit Friday but, all being well, I shouldn’t be more than a few days late.

Which leaves the medicine (SK185) ECA to complete. That shouldn’t take more than a day or two at most though. After that there’s the microbes course (S171) but it’s a background course for me so no great rush as the assignment isn’t due ’til the end of April.

That doesn’t count the main course which, for this year, is biology (S204) that has a page count easily twice that of any other course I’ve done. Having said that, the course team writing the thing got completely carried away and these days quite a lot of those pages aren’t included in the course for various reasons. For example, there are three separate strands starting from around the second month and you only need to do two of those (plants/microbes/animals) although I suspect that the choice of which two will need some thought. My theory is that I’ll do animals and microbes at the moment which’ll ease the microbe course and should help in my planned schedule over the next couple of years. That said, I’ll need some of the plants bit for my plants residential in July.

Oh, and not to forget TT281 although I’m hoping that it will fly just as quickly as TT280 did.

Supposedly our doctor operates to a maximum of 48 hours delay for appointments but in reality it’s at least a week and in the winter months it can be more like two or three weeks. The net effect of that is that a rising number of people (and it’s mainly the elderly) who make a rolling series of appointments “just in case” which, naturally, clogs up the appointment calendar. In fact, one elderly lady seems to make daily appointments as she is always there when we call in.

To get around this clogging up of the appointment system they abandon it altogether at least one day a week and two or three when it’s really bad. What happens then is that they have an “open surgery” which means you need to call them between 9am and 11am when you’re put through to a doctor who decides whether or not you need to be seen. Sounds fine, but in practice we tried to get through on every opportunity for two weeks solid and didn’t manage to get anything but an engaged tone.

But even when you do get through to a doctor they’re clearly massively overworked thanks to that 100% booking of appointments. Thus it’s very much a cursory visit. So, despite us managing to get an appointment a couple of weeks ago and exhibiting all the symptoms of swine flu were just sent home and told to keep taking liquids. That’s the instruction that has managed to kill far too many people. OK, those who aren’t so healthy at the off might well die with a cold never mind flu but you don’t expect healthy people to die of the flu these days, do you?