Foreign Perspectives

Although I just finished the Child Development (ED209) on Wednesday and I’m currently doing Human Biology (SK277) which started in early October, it’s actually time for me to be thinking about the next course yet again.

You might think that since I’m plugging away with a Psychology degree that the next course would be quite a simple choice in that there’s a clear list of courses that comprise that degree. However, there’s a scheduling problem with that sequence in the form of Biological Psychology (SD226) which starts in February. Although the start date is OK, the wording in the description concerning recommended prior courses says that you are “strongly recommended” to do courses such as Exploring Psychology (DSE212), Child Development, Human Biology or Biology: uniformity and diversity (S204) before doing Biological Psychology. Now, if you look at the Human Biology and Biology course descriptions it’s clear that it’s an either/or recommendation and indeed that’s why I’m currently doing the Human Biology course. However, it’s not so clear if that also applies to the Exploring Psychology and Child Development courses which has me wondering if it would be better to do the Exploring Psychology course first rather than after Biological Psychology.

Now, assuming that I don’t do Biological Psychology this coming February (which seems quite likely at the moment), that leaves me with a gap in the early part of 2010. So what can I slot in? Well, I could leave it as a gap in that the Human Biology course is running through to June but I want to keep to 60 points a year which means adding another 30 point course. None of the other psychology courses fit the bill as they’re level 3 courses and definitely require Exploring Psychology.

However, as well as the psychology degree I’m also quite interested in following up a physics degree at some point and could see me doing a biology one if the Human Biology course proves as interesting as it seems to be at the moment. Of those, the next potential biology course (Infectious Disease [S320]) is at level 3 so that’s not really a runner ’til I get Human Biology completed. Which leaves the series of courses making up the physics degree. That appears to offer the most viable sequence of which the first one would be Using Mathematics (MST121).

One other “little” problem is that thanks to the funding mess that the ELQ policy has dropped upon the OU it seems quite likely that it won’t be possible to do either the biology or the physics degree for much longer because the required summer schools won’t be available. That seems to point towards the advantage of getting the required summer schools done as soon as possible for either the physics or the biology degree (it’s not possible to do both in the time required [no later than 2012]). The only issue with that is that the core courses in the psychology degree come with expiry dates so I need to keep those dates in mind.

So at the moment, it’s looking like it’ll be Using Mathematics in January though I don’t need to decide on that for another month or so.