At least it's done!

There was no clock!  There has to be a clock!  It’s in the regulations!  But there was no clock.  And indeed nobody else.  I was supposed to be joined by one other candidate but I was alone.  Well, not alone there was an invigilator.

I spread myself over two desks.  On one my pen, answer book, bottle of water and tissues.   On the other the rest of my pens, my drugs, passport, phone, documentation and notes.

We didn’t wait for the non-appearing man and so started roughly on time.  After the administration of filling in attendance certificates and the front page of the answer book, I was given my single sheet question paper.

It is disconcerting to discover that the only sounds in the room are being created by the movement of pen on paper by you, and that when you stop writing there is silence!

There have been few, very few papers that I have taken where I could answer every question – but this was one of them.  Unlike the previous exam this was much more of a discussion using knowledge that, in theory you should have acquired during the course.  In the last exam one of the questions was creative writing and the other two were glorified comprehension.  Easy peasy.  In retrospect.

I did (honestly) write some sort of essay plan and tried to keep to the 40 minutes per question that is recommended so that the exam could be completed in two hours, rather than the three allowed.

I can’t pretend that I am satisfied with what I wrote, but it will have to stand, there is nothing more I can do about it.  My mind must now turn to the new course and get stuck in.  Whatever result I get I must admit that I have enjoyed this course much more than the previous one.  One of the signs of education is surely being taught something and then in the course of the next few months finding out that names, concepts and events crop up with astonishing regularity in the course of normal reading and listening!  That has happened with this course and there are many aspects of the various subjects that we encountered that are going to stay with me forever!

The next course, Creative Writing is going to be a stretch for me because I am being asked to write in a way which is completely foreign to me.  For example, one of the first exercises we have been asked to try is “Freewrite” which is twenty minutes of flowing writing letting your subconscious take you where it will.  I have tried this, but the tutor has said that I still “have my hands on the handlebars” – in other words I am trying to give more and structure to the writing instead of allowing the writing to emerge and go to places that you cannot control.

But my fingers are on the keys of the typewriter and, although I am a touch typist and I can type faster than I can write, there is a definite barrier in that my brain is organizing things!  Well, we will see where my writing goes.

Toni visited the doctor today and I think that I will go tomorrow. 

This bloody illness has now been with me for three weeks and I am not used to things like this: Something Must Be Done!

Cough and Learn!

An indifferent day of coughing, where lung wrenching was mixed with concern about how much energy was being devoted to the expulsion of phlegm rather than the retention of specific knowledge for the examination which is now within fifteen hours (Spanish time) and I have probably reached some sort of limit of what I can actually be expected to parrot.

Though, thinking about it, I realise that I am hoping for “unfair” questions which demand difficult interpretation rather than a simple invitation to parade facts.  I need examiner trickiness to work for me and give the edge on which an experienced questions answerer (and setter) should be able to thrive!

As has been my wont in all my past examinations I will use part of tomorrow morning to do the last minute revision which will prove to be of no use whatsoever.  But do it I will because do it I have.

And Thursday evening I will really get down to taking a full part in the new course.  I have already written something, but that was merely displacement activity from the revision I was supposed to be doing.  I realise from cursory searching through the forums that I am fortunate to be part of a lively and responsive group and that is something to keep going as they are going to be as important as individual effort in making a success of this course.

A major problem for me is the whole idea of a Day School.  The tutor group for those people taking OU courses on mainland Europe is with The North of England and the first Day School is in Penrith.  The second Day School is in Geneva.  I am not sure that either is a realistic proposition and I have looked at Cardiff as a possible base.  The whole point of the first of the Day Schools is however to make a real link with other people in the group so that the quality of the feedback on individual writing is facilitated.  The tutor has said that after the Day School the response is markedly different and more personal.  Well, that will have to be something that will have to be the basis of another story!

I am still writing a daily Haiku and I have to admit that I am enjoying the experience.  On my writing in the past I consider that my strength is more towards poetry than prose, yet I have written much more prose than poetry.

I do think that I have something of a feel for words and when I am writing a poem I have a keen sense of when something is an approximation rather than a fit – though I would be hard pressed to say why I change some of the words.  The most important change during the forthcoming months is that my writing is going to be more public.  I know that there is my blog, but the blog goes out into the ether and is probably not the sort of thing that invites responses.  This course is greatly about writing and response and from the look of the group they appear to be able to respond.  The private nature of previous writing is now being changed and I am nearer to my school days than anything else in the last forty odd years!

The first exercise deal with what the course calls “Freewriting”.  This is a technique where from a given starting point you write constantly and continuously for something like twenty minutes, writing whatever comes into your mind rejecting correcting, editing and too much thought.  It is an opportunity to write fluently and badly – the thing to remember is not to stop and not to go back.  I have written a couple of these and the element that I find most difficult is making reasonable and helpful comments on other people’s work.  And that is the essential part of this exercise at the moment so it is something to which I need to give time.  Almost being a teacher again – though hopefully without the teacher voice!

And an early night tonight.  Though I have not been going to sleep easily as there is always important coughing to do when I lay down!

A fresh start tomorrow!

Final days . . .

Phase II of my revision is now complete and I have an impressive array of double column printed pieces of paper on which (sometimes cryptic) phrases are the way in which I am going to approach the three essays that I have to write.  I am a day and a half ahead of myself which actually allows some real learning to take place!

I am well aware that revision does not, or at least is not supposed to, demand actual “learning” just the restoration of knowledge already hidden somewhere in the little grey cells.  But however hard you try some words, concepts and facts just go on surprising by their freshly minted appearance, no matter how many times you are convinced that you have encountered them before!  That surely is one of the pleasures of learning: always something new!  Thank god for the fallibility of the human creature!

What is really instructive is the difference between the revision for this course rather than the other.  The selection of questions for the previous course was simple and exclusive.  I revised what I knew I was going to answer, and when two of the questions were heavily dependent on printed context and the other on creativity you are on to a winner.  The present course exam allows us to select one question and one theme, but the middle questions could be on anything and the last question asks us to ensure that we are drawing on ideas from the whole of the course.

As is often the way, revision does force the individual (if only in self defence) to make intellectual leaps to try and tie together disparate parts of the course into a coherent narrative to try and give an overall integrity to the learning.  At least this is what I hope is happening – otherwise those sheets of paper are going to be a complete waste of time!

The weather is doing its bet to tempt me into a bout of star gazing, and I have a dread that post Thursday the weather is going to take a turn for the worse and mock my restraint with rain.  At the moment the rain is restricting itself to night time in a very civilized and acceptable way, but I fear that poor climatic conditions are just waiting for my illusory freedom to make my participation in the present course that little bit easier.

I am trying to write something as part of the course, but my mind is, understandably, elsewhere at the moment and will be until the closure late afternoon on Thursday.

What hypocrisy! 

Having completed a fair amount of work I felt that I would do even better with a lunch-orientated break.

We went back where we used to live and patronised a restaurant which has changed hands and is now much more popular with a tented area outside the restaurant packed with people.  Why they were all there on a Tuesday I know not, but the fact that even tented is considered “outside” and therefore open for smokers, drove us inside away from the noxious clouds.

The meal was exceptional starting with whitebait, followed by cod salad, followed by bream (you can see a bit of a theme developing here) and ending with fresh melon, washed down by a surprisingly drinkable red and a coffee with ice.  For a tenner!

Returning, Toni felt worse and I tried to keep to my resolution to return to my revision with refreshed vigour.  Which I did for minutes until the lure of the sun proved too much and I adopted the appropriately prone position for a short (honestly) snooze.

Back, eventually, to the computer and the discovery that one of our student colleagues has produced pages and pages of notes which she generously shared with us via the forum.  Very useful.  Though quite how they will be received by those who do not or have not produced their own notes is a more problematical thought.  And two days before the exam.  Pause for thought!

The other course has only been going for a few days but it looks as though it is going to be a good one because so many of the students on it are prepared to voice opinions and put work on the forums.  Two more days and I will be a fully committed student typing away with increasing fury as the course progresses!

All to do!

Temptation?

Out of the ether: a message of goodwill and touching base again after a longish delay, eyebrow raising about the speed at which time passes, and incredulous disbelief at the whooshing sound that was the summer past.  And there, a few lines in, the shyly proffered apple.

I suppose that for a retired teacher (as I am trying to be) there is nothing that strikes at the firm foundations of your stony rejection of your previous employment like the offer of work for a couple of weeks in a school which is hop, a step and a partial jump from where I am living.  I am asked to teach, therefore I am - a teacher!

In spite of all my protestations about finally turning from educator to educatee, I did feel a tiny tug of interest – but the lingering depredations of terminal (in the sense that it is at last going) bronchitis are a useful reminder of reality, and I was able to type a firm, but friendly rejection of employment to the school.

Pity, because there is nothing quite like showing your face in a crowded staff room to universal approbation because, if you are there and taking an absent colleague’s place, then they are not going to lose a free period with any luck!  I do not kid myself that I was valued for my wit and insight; it was my physical presence in front of a class rather than theirs that kept them sweet!

However, that is in the past.  The present and the immediate future concerns the Examination – which has now progressed from a vague date in the first third of the month of October, to a word which fully merits its capital letter and something which is frighteningly prescient.  I am now in Phase II of Revision which is reducing what I have to know to a series of key words, phrases and dates – all of which need to contain resonances which will flower into clear, lucid prose on Thursday afternoon!

But the sun is shining and I know, deep in my bones, that I should be taking the last of the late summer, early autumn sun before the gloom of winter sets in.  I compromised and set outside clutching a sheaf of papers on which the cryptic runes for Thursday were written.

I am not one of those people who plan their revision so that for the last five or six days you simply do nothing but allow the information to settle.  I revise until the last moment.  Unlike a friend in college who stopped working a week before her exams.  She was someone with a photographic memory and could tell you exactly what we were doing on this exact date last year and the year before that and the year before that and . . . Something my mind (I have only a fuzzy idea of what I was doing yesterday) cannot even begin to imagine.  And yes, we did test her, and she was right!  She was able to imagine textbooks in her mind and read down to the information that she needed!  One exclamation mark seems woefully inadequate, but stylistically I cannot bring myself to commit the solecism of more than one!

So I am happily typing my list of words and phrases and, with time ticking away, I find that I am actually ahead of my planned revision timetable.  Though, I also have to admit that there is a fair bit of learning in the revision too!  Though what can we be fairly expected to write when we have only 500 words per question?

But with the Phase II revision, by lunchtime I should be a whole volume ahead of myself.  At this rate Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning will be a simple matter of reading over what I have typed and working out what my laconic comments might mean.

Way to go!