So it goes!

I know that you will not be surprised to read that I am typing this while a dozen hapless pupils worry their way through yet another examination.  Not surprised, certainly – but shocked beyond measure at the sheer unprofessionalism of my typing while an exam is taking place – even if I can touch type. 

After a Herculean effort over the weekend I am at least examination script free to start the week and even more fortunately I have a “free” period after this class so that I can start the process of working my way through the paper I will have to mark.  Before the next set looms ahead of me.  As it will in a few days time.  Again.

However, I am determined to use the examinations to force me to work on the next tutor marked assignment and at least get a rough draft completed by the end of the week.

I am going to choose the Creative Writing option and have decided to write some form of sonnet as my finished piece of work and I will have to rely on my persuasiveness to make whatever I produce sound convincing in the reflective piece which follows it!

I vividly remember an economics essay that I wrote in school during the A Level course, which was so badly done, that the teacher took the step of going through the essay with each of us individually.  When it came to my turn, my glib justifications for what I had and hadn’t written were so convincing that he actually changed the grade!  A rare success in that benighted subject!  Thank god we also did an economic history paper – my salvation in the drear world of graphs and eventually diminishing returns in the other!

It had obviously rained earlier this morning or last night, but the day has turned into one of sunshine though with a blustery element which, as it is not raining is fine by me.

The Pauls, fired by my descriptions of days without rain, have suggested appearing some time over the Easter holidays.  Paul 1 will have had his Inspection by then and will be looking for some way to relieve the tension.  Again.  As I am quite sure that the memory will be washed away in copious amounts of alcohol immediately after the event!  But here we might even have that most precious of experiences so lacking in my native land, sunshine.  And that, as all know, is the true balm for troubled minds!

Days have passed again and sheer exhaustion has triumphed over intellectual effort.  But at least I have an annotated draft of the “sonnet” that I propose to submit as part of my next tutor marked assignment.  I have asked a couple of colleagues to read through and I have adopted one or two changes that they suggested!

I have now read through the details of the assignment and have to look through the course book that we are using and find justifications for the process that I went through to produce this piece!  Possibly the wrong way round, but it works for me!

This is one of my “long” days when I actually have to be here when the morass of parentage splurges towards their offspring and grasps them warmly to the parental bosom.  To do this they obviously need to double and triple park so that at the end of the day I am hemmed in by many cars in many configurations.  I am told that trying to get away from the School on the Hill at the time we chuck out the kids is good for the soul – I have yet to reach this state of Zen bliss!

I did managed to drag my weary body to the pool for a swim and almost slept my way through my mandatory twenty minutes.  The theory is that one sort of tiredness cancels out the other; so schoolwork depredations are ameliorated by physical exertion.  The theory is good, but the practical application in my case is not always foolproof.

The pseudo-sonnet is now written and I have to find explanations for the process by which it was created.  As I analyse the “poem” more, using my critic-type hat rather than my creative one, I am truly amazed by the complexity of my thought!  To be absolutely fair I think that this has more to do with the way my critical mind works, sniffing about for all sorts of unlikely links and profundities rather than for the purity of intellectual endeavour that produced the “poem” in the first place.

The next few days will see me delving into the course books to find the OU justification for what I have done – such is the world of academia!

My next course, starting in May, is now sorted out and I have bowed to the inevitable and decided to do the Foundation course in the Arts so that my future degree can be entitled “Humanities with Art History” – this means that next year I will be doing the 60 credit AA100 and that will take me to the next stage when I will be doing courses which are designed to stretch me more and which are more clearly directed towards Art.  So that is the next six years sorted!  I imagine that after a while the OU becomes a way of life!

Toni’s course has now “started” with a series of orientation exercises using the Internet.  So, from the middle of next month we will both be studying.  I should imagine that the desk on The Third Floor is going to be the scene of some fraught exchanges as our endeavours intermingle!

But now a new day.  A short period of reflection for my first class and then planning the rest of my time to ensure that I manage to get the extra out-of-school tasks done!

And it’s one of my “short days” so not everything is bad with the world!