And talking of expectation, our tutor is
now getting to the end of the time allowed by the OU for her to complete the
marking. She is allowed ten working days
and, allowing for empty weekends she should only have a couple of days left to
get everything done and sent back to us.
We will see. In my experience
both staff and students are quite cute when it comes to making the most of the
time available when it is there for the taking!
As this is a full 60-credit course I need
to find out what priorities the tutor has because she is going to be sole
arbiter of my mark. There is no examination;
everything is going to be done by assignment, so knowing what makes such a
person tick is pretty important. To be
fair the OU does give a vast amount of information about how the stuff is going
to be assessed, but however proscriptive the description there is always
wiggle-room for personal interpretation.
And anyway this is all about personal interpretation. There is only so much that can be give for
accuracy and following the rules, this is, after all Creative Writing and
therefore there must be a certain amount of latitude for personal taste to
influence the final mark.
I suppose that writing is fairly close to
my heart and I value the skill that I think that I have. As a teacher I am well able to evaluate a
piece of writing I have, after all been doing that for all of my professional career,
I also know that I am much more than competent in dashing off a response to a
limited exercise which can impress with its flashy imagination and facile
style. It is taking it a step further,
which is what I want this course to do for me, that is the worrying part. The importance is not linked to some sort of
paper qualification but to something which is rather more central to my life –
my belief in my ability to self-evaluate.
Perhaps teachers are the worst of all students in needing the comfort of
peer group evaluation! Doesn’t make it
any easier!
My swim today was exceptional and I went
beyond what I have done recently! Though
admittedly in a sort of low-key way. I
have no idea what sportsmen and women are talking about when they say that they
are able to break through the pain barrier.
Does it actually mean anything at all?
Pain is nature’s way of telling you to stop. We should always listen to pain because it
always has the possibility of using the weapon of the ultimate silence to those
who will not hear! Do these mythical
sportspeople have a gene which allows them to self-medicate? Rubbish, they are simple masochists. Pure and simple.
My ‘pain barrier’ is finding a rhythm and
feeling that, if I wanted to I could swim for ever. Now in reality I have no intention of going
over my self-imposed limit of 30 minutes and it is only the continuation of a
particularly interesting track humming its way through my cheekbones that ever
takes me over that limit. But that
steady, many would say monotonous, churning of the water with strong,
methodical, almost effort free strokes is a pleasant mode to be in. It does take effort and I am well aware of
that at all times, but in my own small way it is a technique of going beyond.
Toni is now obsessed by his course and it
drives him relentlessly. He complains
about the work and the lack of response from some of his tutors, but the
maniacal gleam in his eyes tells you that this is what his life has been leading
up to! In a way I feel that about my
course too, though the fear of what I am supposed to create by the end of it is
something which I find intimidating all these months before. I know that at the turn of the year the
speech towards the end of the course will increase and I will join in the
hysteria of all the other students who begin to wail their inadequacies to the
moon! Though that is an accepted perk of
doing distance learning, I understand!
Since the clocks have gone back the nights
have drawn in with a terrifying velocity and its now only half past six but it
is black. I am already beginning to long
for the expansive days of summer! Greed
has always been one of my besetting sins!
I am now almost through the second box of
new CDs which are being put into the computer, only the box of Das Alte Werk to
go and I will have added 150 discs to my system! Amazing, and all of them quality. Not quality for Toni perhaps but for me yes! There is a lot on these discs with which I am
not familiar and so I could start another learning curve and get some obscure
music under my belt and into my ears – or I could just wait for the ‘random’
program to give it to me eventually.
Which seems a much use of my time.
I am listening to selected discs, but purely on the basis of absolute
self-indulgence!
Tomorrow my new Kindle (!) and more deep
thinking about the unfairly attractive watch in the local shopping centre!
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