OU blog

Personal Blogs

me

40 marks is a pass right?

Visible to anyone in the world

I got my second TMA back (like I'm sure everyone has) and I'm a little disappointed. I think, mostly, with myself. Fortunately I passed. Barely. I made some bad mistakes, I didn't go through the marking of the previous assignment carefully enough, I made almost all the same mistakes again. Somehow I managed to do more of those mistakes the second time. The other bad mistake is a problem I have with the whole format of answering the questions. I've never written an essay where you don't write from a perspective, I always say that 'I will answer the question-" and so on. I'm trying to get my head around the idea that you are literally just writing facts down, I think that is my new approach. Identify points I need to make to get marks. Write them down as simply as I possibly can then worry about stringing it together into prose later.

The whole prose thing is what I mean by the format being tough for me, I really enjoy writing, generally. Anyone who does knows it can be a pig sometimes. As I'm sure your fascinated, I find it easy to write poetry and am currently trying to force myself to write decent prose. So in answering the question for the assignment (last time) I tried to make sure my answers had a nice narrative feel and made some interesting points. I actually thought I had written a couple of really good answers, somehow I had this feeling I might not even pass though. As I say, that stuff ends now, much simpler approach needed. I'm going to throw out working through the unit. That did me no good. I just found that I had all the information in my head and was comfortable with the material, all that let me do was make worse mistakes as I happily chatted on about what I thought the answer was. The answer isn't something to be worked out, it is written down plainly for you in the material. All that needs doing is transferring it into your assignment. That coupled with using citations and references for each and every single point I make will hopefully transfer into a better mark.

As for the prose, well, I'm fairly confident that it will be at least equally as difficult as learning how to answer the assignments. More fun though. Again, its desparately fascinating, I'm trying to get used to spacing out my language and create a good narrative. I find that basically, my problem, is writing in a simple way that describes the environment and characters to the reader. Like all books do. I'm just ploughing through my idea for a story, making small changes, then I plan to go back and try to make it more readable. I'm only slightly less lazy about that than I am about my OU studies.

Saying that, now that I have no plans to incorporate the reading and activities into an overall scheme, I can just attack the question head on. I'm working out phases for answering the question, identifying points I want to make, gathering references, checking the wording and detail of the question carefully, then putting together an answer. So my other time is free to spend on the other things in my life.

First of those is fitness and sport. I quit the gym. High five. Other gyms are more than twenty quid a month and I can't justify paying that nor can I justify walking forty minutes to the gym to work out for an hour so to then walk forty mintues home, even though I am now essentially out of work again. Thats next other thing. So I have taken to jogging to start off my new fitness plan the same way as I started at the gym. Simple exercise that I am comfortable with. The rowing machine was my bag to begin with and I had dramatically improved my speed and distance in the two months I was going to the gym. Ironically I couldn't take much of the running machine, I don't know why, it was too bouncy and stuff. I definitely did not try skipping or hopping really fast late at night when there was hardly anyone there. Sport wise, tennis is long gone, which is kinda lame. Have to wait until whenever this whole giant storm thing passes us to be able to get back to it. Thats ok though, because football is on the up and up! My wrist, which I nearly broke, I don't know if I wrote that here. Some guy kicked a shot so hard (I play in goal mostly) it damaged the muscles in my hand and wrist so badly that I could even close a fist. I went back to play next week with a wrist brace and strong painkillers. As any reasonable man would. So I have, to put it plainly, been pretty shoddy since the start of December because trying to keep goal with one hand is a little tricky. People have this crazy idea to shoot to that side, positives, I have got a lot better as an outfielder. The good thing is I am getting better and can almost do a press up now. We have our first match next week, very excite, I will let you know how it goes.

And so work, BLAHHHHHHHHHHH. What a jip. I called to see if there was any news on the January shifts, oh yeah they say, this week they say. Nothing at all. No call. No, thanks for Christmas, blah. I missed those shifts because of the train, thats sealed my fate, I'm saying no more. The football stadium however, sweet deal, I now get to work with the players. Well, very near the players, running my own bar. Oh yeah. High five. I obviously don't get paid more but I get to work harder and longer. Yay! Went into the players lounge with an order and I was like, oh thats cool, not sure who half these guys are. Brighton have a famous international goalkeeper, I saw him and I was like, damn. Its a pretty sweet deal, after the game they hang around with friends and family at the stadium and come to our bars. Its better than like, I don't know, the Status Quo fans for instance. Nice as they are.

Lastly I am trying to have some kind of love life. I have been told that if you look for love it doesn't come. I should really explain this a bit, I don't disagree with that. So New Years is New Years, right, it turns out that some lady told me that I was (quelle surprise) a good dancer. I'm like, yeah, sure shes a friend of the DJ and wants us to stay here. She'll say anything. The be-boys were there and I felt like any other raver. So we go out for a friend from works (EVILL WORK) birthday, I get plenty drunk, enough that I am totally convinced I can dance, enough so I don't care if I can't. As all guys know when you go out, there are at least ten thousand amazingly hot/beautiful girls that are way too good for you. Long story short I ended dancing with some of those girls and for a short drunken time I had some self confidence. Go me. I forget how the night ended, oh no, I remember .. yeah, listening to your headphones on really quiet streets does not for a cool situation make.

Thats about it, my comic book collecting is going well, I will sort out some pictures because I know it is so interesting, for next time. I am in the process of going through all the stuff I have in storage (mostly clothes and DVDs) and throwing it out/giving it to charity. Clothes are almost done, the DVDs are a lot harder. I don't know what to do with them. Like, at all. Sell them? But I love them, its worse than with music, if I got rid of a movie that I later couldn't find. I might not of even think of it. Anyway, I don't know, I'm gonna get them all together and go through my collection. I might throw all the cases away and put them in a folder or something.

Heres pulling for all your New Years resolutions to come good, don't forget to join us at https://www.facebook.com/groups/316262468519466/ for light-hearted Facebooking, currently talking Duggan and Burkhas, Birkas, Burkas? I have no idea what that word is. Be cool!

werewolf

Joe

 >> http://watch32.com/movies-online/underworld-awakening-1000 << New Underworld movie, well 2012, as far as quadrilogies go. Its better than Tremors. 

Permalink 1 comment (latest comment by Patricia Stammers, Thursday, 16 Jan 2014, 09:11)
Share post

This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.

Total visits to this blog: 169789