Well, I sat the exam for T173 and I'm pretty sure I've done well. It wasn't a breeze, in fact it was so cold in the exam hall that it was more of a FREEZE, but I shivered my way through it and was quite happy with the result. I just wish that, in the advice booklet about what to take to the exam, it had said "wear a coat and thermals". It would have been a lot more useful than "bring a HB pencil" I can tell you - I didn't use the damn pencil once!
Of course, finishing the exam is all very nice because it marks an end to the course and you can move on to other things with a few points in the bag towards your degree, but no-one talks about how you extract yourself from a course. Much effort is made by the OU to help ease students into courses with lots of advice and reassurances, even the courses themselves seem to be designed to start off gently, for the most part, before building up to more complex matters, to get everyone used to the workload. But what about when a course ends? Obviously I can't speak for others, but I find it a huge anti-climax. The studying which has become a big part of my life has now stopped. I don't automatically reach for the engineering course books when I have a bit of spare time. These sacred items now have to be stored away to make room for the next (or current) course and, to be honest, it's a bit of a wrench.
I went through the same thing with B120 last year. Something which has been a big part of your life for months (eight months for T173) is no longer there. It's like losing a pet. Yet there's no support to help you. Even the course site dies a death and disappears along with all the ticked boxes and TMA marks that you work so hard for.
So this ending has caused a bit of a hiatus in my other course work for a couple of weeks as, without T173 in my study plan, I'm having to adapt to not having a comforting engineering course to fall back on when the others (particularly B121) start to "do my head in". At the moment, I've caught up with B121 and , in fact, got a little way ahead after four solid days of headaches and swearing at it. Now I have to put some effort into LOLA (U101) and catch up from two weeks behind. All these problems are caused by "end of course withdrawal".
So how about it OU. Let's have a clinic for those of us who are "course addicts" to get us unhooked cleanly and safely!
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This has come up elsewhere recently. And it's a good point. As I said in my comment to the above I have a name for it. [And a name is always nice!]
The problem, I think, is that we don't have a nice hard cut-off like a brick university does. We're left feeling, "is that it?"
What's helped me for my last couple of courses is getting involved in shared activities to generate answers to the exam. It cements the knowledge, keeps you connected to your course-mates and is a resource for those who follow.
I should be doing that now, but I'm off to watch some tennis. [Which also helps!
]
arb
neil