So, I chose to study the extended history part for the optional week and learnt more about the women's suffrage movement. I stand by my reasoning that learning a language for one week is paramount to useless, although I enjoyed Mandarin last term.
- How has your knowledge been developed? 1) The difference between militant and peaceful action; 2) the way in which a historical narrative has been created that has the Pankhursts and the suffragettes at centre stage, meaning we miss out on a lot of the other nuances and groups of the time that led to female suffrage; 3) ultimately, World War I was a huge factor in extending the franchise to women.
What has helped you to learn? I enjoyed the radio clips and looking at the pictures in the museum online. The biographies were less interesting for me; I found that aural learning (via the radio programmes) coupled with a transcript for more detailed analysis worked well for me.
I also handed in my TMA (03) - it's been a long while since I updated this blog! I'm losing heart rather with long-distance learning. I got 86/100, which I suppose is perfectly reasonable but I'm very disappointed. I thought that I had written a fairly good essay and was hoping for 90+. This course is making me question whether university and studying would actually be the right road for to take in a general sense, which is very disheartening as I have always thought of myself as someone who is academic and would have excelled at university had other life circumstances not got in the way. Now, I wonder if maybe university wouldn't have been all that great anyway, even if I had been well enough to go at a more 'normal' age. At 27, I feel old. There are many people older studying this access course, I realise, but they are doing other things with their lives. I have done nothing with mine but be ill and cause a lot of people a great deal of hassle.
Life just seems rather hard at the moment.