Personal Blogs

Thank you to everyone who commented on my moany/ quitting/ why bother post from March....

I have not bothered to blog since then, such was the depth of my disenchantment.

Just stuck to the study planner, kept my head down and got the course materials completed.

Completed they are now, all TMA's submitted and marked, just the exam to do....

Made a decision for next year, after being so frustrated/ bored/ wound up/ pissed off by the last two years, I decided I may as well plough on, after all,

 I am in for a penny, so why not be in for a pound?

Although my student loan balance statement came through this week, so it is more like...

In for £11,000, so why not be in for £18,000.....

Heart stopping isn't it... £ 18,000.....

I have decide to do DD316 for my next module, it is a brand new course, came out this year, and it's set book is George Orwell's 1984.

I thought that after hating philosophy and economics so much, I would do Politics next year as I have enjoyed all my politics modules.

That leaves me with Hobson's choice for my final year, Philosophy or Economics?

At the moment I think I would find a final year of Philosophy tolerable, Economics not so.

That decision is still ongoing, T+C's apply, actual decision may not match promotional material, may not be available in you area, model shown is a May 2018 model.

We will see,

Tma 5 was done and sent.

One more block 'political philosophy' and the exam to do and thats #bloodya222 done and dusted.

By that point i will be exactly half way through my degree, by moving into the economics module and waiting to see how the new vice-vice-chancallor deals with the challenges facing the OU.

But most important of all..  i will not have to go near another philosophy module..happy days. 

On the pathway for a Politics, Philosophy and Economics degree, the last two modules are a free choice.

You can only study two of the three subjects in the last two modules.

At the moment i can quite happily say that philosophy will be my dtopped subject.

I wonder if i will still feel that way after i have slogged my way through this module?

I have some more pictures from our berlin trip to share, so I thought I would bundle them up here, with how they relevant to the key themes and idea's discussed in my Politics, Economics and Philosophy course...

Marx, the political and economic philosopher, and his backer, Engels.

The Reichstag, power, sovereignty, Legitimate use of violence.

The Berlin Wall, boundaries, international relations, globalisation

Wearing an old soviet republic t-shirt outside the rebranded Russian federation embassy.

International relations,

So I bundled all my flashcards up by block and published them on my blog:

www.thespecialistgeneralist.net

I included some other musing about the relationship between states and globalisation and Weber theory on the 'legitimate use of violence'

Now I really must motivate to revise from the module books...

I am calling it quits now with the flash cards.

Time to move on to revising the module books this weekend and the website modules after that.

I hope that my fellow students who i shared the flssh cards with found them in some way useful.

I think I only have 2 more flash cards to do, then I will just get on with revising from the module books. It might be well time to move on, I gave this latest flash card a thunderbirds theme because it looks at International Relations. My focus might be starting to slip, only two more to go though.....

Here is my final flash card for DD211 block 4, this one deals with leadership within lijphart defined liberal democracies.

I am really enjoying making the infographics for revision. For me it is a good revision tool, I am able to produce them without referring from the module materials, I only check what I have produce against the module materials to correct what I have produce, so I must be retaining the info quite well.

I am about half way through producing the flash cards, I have 2 more to do for block 4, Lijphart's model of liberal democracies. Then I will move onto 4 cards about globalisation.

That should mean I can take sound knowledge of 4 of the 5 blocks into the exam, and then once there, I can decide on the structure and themes of my short and long answers, depending on my confidence in producing short and long answers to each block themes.

Well that is the plan anyway.......

Slide 2 for block 4 lijphart flashcards

Ideology of Liberalism. it has a spelling mistake, Liberals usE not liberals us the above. also i am stopping here with ideology, i would only ever carry it forward to the exam as a short answer. i don't have time to do each ideology in relation to welfare, nor make a infographic for feminism or environmentalism. I am moving onto Lipjhart and his modules of Liberal democracies next. so sorry Simon Banks van Zyl but it's 4 flash cards only for ideology.

Here is the flash card for the ideology of socialism (excluding the ideology of welfare).

those of you who follow my blog will know I am a big fan of infographics.

I decided to produce some for my revision study of DD211.

so I have posted them here, if any one is interested, I would be very proud if any one else used them in their own revision program.

Just producing them was a very good revision activity.

Lets start with Block 2: Political concepts.

Freedom:

Equality

Power

I found it very useful to produce these, a act of revision in itself.