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Thank you OU. You've taught me to simplify the complex

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It has taken a few years longer than I had hoped, but the intellect that the OU stretched, spat out, embraced and developed is now being put to good use.

It is like writing a TMA every day ... and then cutting the word count by a quarter. The intention to make sense of academic papers as they are published; it happens to be on medicine. No, I am not an M.D, but the OU has taught me how to think and express myself.

Children of warmer, less controlling parents 'grow up to be happier.'

This article gets a plug, but it could have considerable resonance with some OU students. Brought up, as some of us were, in the 1960s, we could have had parents who were more controlling than others. They in turn, in my family at least, had their parents who brought them up in the 40s under very tight control.

So it does our heads in forever more?

 

 

 

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/298898.php

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Design Museum

Parents

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 10 Jul 2012, 14:14

Who said your perspective on life changes when your parents are no longer alive?

It makes life feel terribly short.

You reflect on the life of the person who has just passed away (or is on that path)

Twice last year I create a 'Book of Condolences' for colleagues which in the immediate week and then for a few months gather some 100 or 70+ comments respectively.

As someone said, 'funerals are for the living'.

Sorry to sound downbeat, but I do wonder 'what is the point?' Short of completing the animalistic duty of reproduction. Growing old can be enjoyed with marriages, births and memorable anniversary but there comes a point when even the grandchildren are forging lives of their own and the generations forget that the oldest generation is still with us.

Especially if you are part of what I call the 'splat generation', those kids who went away to university (when the government and local authority was paying for it) and don't go back.

On reflection I'd have liked to have bound our extended family more closely, that having us in the same town/region or community would have benefited everyone, not least from the love, encouragement and 'life-lessons' we pick up from each other's behaviours (mistakes especially).

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