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!

In spite of everything . . .

Wellness is a fickle taunter!

I thought that I was trundling along the path of coughless delight, where phlegm flowers would no longer bloom when, as so many times before, I made the basic mistake of waking up.  First conscious breath and my tracheae made a bit for freedom.  An orchestrated double concerto for vocal chords and lung!  By the time I had finished I felt that any attempt to leave my bed would be foolhardiness at best and attempted self-destruction at worst.

But the alarm then went off, and like any well trained Russian laboratory animal I dutifully and instinctively rose to take my first puff of medicine.  Justifiably exhausted by two droplet infused inhalations I fell back to my pillow only to be raised, Lazarus-like an hour later for the next puff.  It may not seem like much of a life, but the endlessly irritating gobbets of so-called tune that comprise the iPhone alarm, structure my day for me!  I may be retired from school, but I still exist to the sound of bells!

Phase I of my revision is now done.  Phase II is making the final detailed notes of the essential information which has to be scattered among the generalizations that I intend to make the basis for my responses to the questions.

So, revision, start of a new course, start of another one in nine days, illness and, as a special feature – slimming!  Or at least trying to change my diet a little.  I have to admit that bronchitis is a useful ally in slimming as it does somewhat reduce the appetite – though I would like to think that sheer will-power could achieve this were I fully well.

Apart from a stubborn inclination to produce my own rousing dawn chorus of coughing, I am determined to think that I am getting better.  We will soon see how far rude health and sparse ingestion co-exist!

I have now placed a pad and pen at my bedside and was therefore able to capture in written words “the ruffled sound of a distant cough” – I am sure that will come in useful sometime or other!

The writing of a daily haiku is now becoming something like brushing your teeth: a chore but something which makes you feel better.  It has been a long time since I wrote poetry (or anything approaching it) on a regular basis.  I used to find that self-indulgent misery was the requisite spur for me, but with the demands of the course looming large on a methodically on-going basis, moping has to give way to a form of professionalism.  Writing is work and has to be done, with or without the clichéd starter of elegant depression!

Lunch with Irene has been put off for a further week, although she assures me that the raw material for the meal is safely frozen and will survive another week’s wait.  I have made an executive decision that, obviously, this meal will not be subject to the calorific restraints under which I am living at the moment.  This occasion will be regarded officially as a “Feeding Fiesta” and Will Not Count.  My cunning plan is to hope that my diet (now a week long, dear god is it only a week) will encourage suppression of appetite so that I will, instinctively, choose smaller amounts and thus continue along The Way to redemption.  Not a great plan, but it is all I have at the moment.

The lashing rain of yesterday evening, accompanied by OTT thunder and stage lightening which have given way this morning to a beautiful day of clear blue skies and streaming sunshine.  If only the canine population of the area would develop terminal laryngitis then we humans might be able to relax in placid, warm tranquillity.

As it is the weekend, the other bane of our lives, children, are openly on display.  One of the true delights of retirement is walking around town during the weekday without having ears assaulted by shards of childish scream.  The ranks of the Grey Brigade take over the streets and a secret smile plays about the lips as we retake what is rightfully ours.  I must, however, try and restrain my impulse to call the police every time I see a child during the forbidden times – though they all should be in school and stay in school for lunch and after school activities!

It is now almost the afternoon, at least in Spain and I have the opportunity to get going on Phase II of my revision before its official start tomorrow. 

Choices, always choices. 

And how did I ever find time to do an actual job?

Work to do!

Improvement!  

A palpable improvement!  

Perhaps there is hope that this ridiculously elongated period of a-healthicality has now, or at least is in the process of being consigned to deadened memory.

The revision continues to go well.  It could hardly fail when what I am reading is interesting.  The only points which now are still causing me some concern are those related to the academic authorities which I understand that we actually have to cite by accurate name! 

The problem is, with very few exceptions, the historians and social commentators to who we have been introduced have names which do not have harmonious mixtures of consonants and vowels – or at least not in easily memorable sequences.  I do hope that my examiners take effort as an adequate compensation for a singular lack of specifics!

Today I have been “studying” elements in the course ranging from self-replicating Buddhist relics to Indonesian monoliths by way of Romani processions in the Camargue.  It is, as you can imagine, a course almost purpose made for me!

Tomorrow the course forum for Creative Writing opens and later this month the course on “Brands” run by FutureLearn starts – and there are courses run by Apple for me to get to know my various gadgets a little better.  Never let it be said that I have retired from education.  Only the direction of learning is different!

Tomorrow the final stint to finish off the third volume of my course and the “rough” revision is done.  Next week will see the more detailed Learning revision.  And I can’t wait for the examination to be over and done with!

Other courses call!