Calculations!

There is no way that we have been in school only since Wednesday.  Why, oh why is it that a mid-week start never seems as easy as it should be with a couple of days less?  Not that I am asking for all mid-week starts to be abandoned, you understand.  I am not that stupid, but it is a psychological problem worthy of ig-Nobel research!

Today, rain is forecast – but true to form the weather actually looks relatively fine.  This is usually just one of god’s little tricks to build up my expectations and then cruelly dash them when I finally get out of school and find vindictive rain spitting at the windscreen.

After my over-long, meeting filled day yesterday, I am looking forward to the relatively early release today when I flee at the start of lunchtime.  Admittedly, lunchtime starts at the unearthly time of two o’clock, but there is still a long afternoon (courtesy of official summer time) to relish.

Part, probably a substantial part of the weekend will have to be taken up with a more systematic form of revision than I have been doing heretofore.  I have highlighted words and phrases, now I have to bring them together into a more coherent listing of the OU “official” language that must be used in the answers.

Julie’s flat was excellent; a wonderful buy and very well done up.  Good position and something which will prove to be an excellent investment.  We had lunch in a restaurant in Sitges that we have passed time after time, but never actually eaten in.  The meal was €15 and very good.  The drinks afterwards were in another place that we have passed and never patronized – another discovery.

Watching television in Spain nowadays is almost unbearable as various self appointed experts vie with each other to shout down everything that they say about the systemic corruption which is displayed for our derision each night.  Each new piece of information damns yet more of the establishment so that an unbiased viewer begins to think that the entire system is corrupt.  Which it might well be.

It is something of a relief to turn to revision and I have decided to use Excel to facilitate my organization of key words and phrases using the different aspects of our study to link the ideas together.  Well, it’s working in my mind and tomorrow I will try and make it some sort of reality.  If my method does work then it will be an approach that I will adopt for future modules in my continuing study.

And it’s almost Sunday, the day before the start of a full week of work!

I don’t quite know what happened to the evening of Saturday, but a little snooze turned into a full sleep and suddenly it was the next day!

The weather forecast threatened rain and sun, but what we have had is sun and wind.  It was possible to lay oneself out on the Third Floor but this afternoon it was something of an ordeal as the gusts of wind reminded one that this was April and not June!

The new Excel revision has started and I am gathering in the OU’s language to sprinkle on my answers when I come to do the exam.  The exam or should I say The Exam is now near enough for the jokes to stop and for it to be taken seriously.  There are now two weeks to go and that now seems a remarkably short time.  On Thursday there is our last tutorial which I am steeling myself against, as I fear it is going to contain barely supressed hysteria about the forthcoming trial.  It is a sad fact that the more the OU tries to reassure its students about the examination the more the students feel bereft of hope and confidence!

I am aiming to “enjoy” the examination “experience” but I fear that this laudable attitude will have been destroyed long before I put pen to paper in The British Council!  It shows how sad I am that I have bought two new disposable fountain pens just for this occasion!

I have ten more weeks in school; two and a half months – and then I am done.  Ten weeks is fifty teaching days – minus May Day and a day for the Second Easter (don’t ask), so 48 teaching days.  It sounds much more doable when it is put like that!

Doesn’t it?