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Finished my first year!!
Posted May 23rd 2014 at 11:36 AM by LlamaLlamaDuck
I have *OFFICIALLY* finished my first year at the Open University. Two more years and I'll have a degree in Psychology and can decide whether to do a Masters in Criminal Psychology or Mental Health! 
I just submitted my exam essay for the Social Sciences module and could not be more relieved. They really screwed up.
See, we get an "Assignment Booklet" with every module. In that, we have the questions for each assignment we have to hand in, as well as pointers on what we should focus on, what direction to go in, how it should be formatted, etc. These booklets are beyond invaluable!
So this essay is the exam for Social Sciences. It's worth 30% of the final grade and you need at least 30% on it to pass the module. First of all, the question. It was about mediation which, for most people, means "An attempt to bring about a peaceful settlement or compromise between disputants through the objective intervention of a neutral party."
First problem.
The question was "'Mediation means the way things are represented to us' (Kelly and Toynbee, 2009, p. 369) Compare and contrast two explanations of the mediation of social disorder."
That is confusing to start with. I have looked in several dictionaries and asked a few people and none of them mentioned anything about "the way things are represented to us" so it was difficult to write about mediation in that context when you've grown up believing it means something completely different.
Then we find out a week before it's due in via email from student support that despite the fact three scientists are mentioned in the booklet, it's a specific two we need to focus on, which screwed a lot of people who picked the wrong ones.
Finally, the only information on the topic was across two pages in the textbook and a conversation in an audio clip.
Well long story short half of the people enrolled on the module have sent angry emails to student support because this is the most important essay of the module and they've picked a topic with so little information available. I agree it's pretty ridiculous but at the same time... I managed it? Maybe I did it wrong. It took me a long five hours and a lot of stress but I did manage eventually.
So I'm free! I'll find out at the end of July sometime how I did on that and my final essay for Discovering Psychology.
Now to celebrate I'm spending the weekend with Naomi. This is a big thing, we haven't been together through the weekend for two years. I spent Friday and Saturday night with her not long after we got together. Since then, nothing. I work weekends.
But I got this weekend off. And we were supposed to go camping in Inverness together. Until we saw what the train fares were...
SO we're camping out in her bed.
We're going on holiday five weeks on Sunday! We go to Center Parcs every year, but in two weeks, they're opening up a new one in Woburn Forest so since it's the last one the UK are going to have, it's a once in a lifetime chance, so we're going there instead of to Sherwood Forest where we usually go. The UK has a lot of forests, there are three others in Elveden, Longleat, and Whinfell.
I'm really excited about it, I can finally look forward to summer now that my essays are gone and I have nothing to worry about.
That was long and rambly.
I just submitted my exam essay for the Social Sciences module and could not be more relieved. They really screwed up.
See, we get an "Assignment Booklet" with every module. In that, we have the questions for each assignment we have to hand in, as well as pointers on what we should focus on, what direction to go in, how it should be formatted, etc. These booklets are beyond invaluable!
So this essay is the exam for Social Sciences. It's worth 30% of the final grade and you need at least 30% on it to pass the module. First of all, the question. It was about mediation which, for most people, means "An attempt to bring about a peaceful settlement or compromise between disputants through the objective intervention of a neutral party."
First problem.
The question was "'Mediation means the way things are represented to us' (Kelly and Toynbee, 2009, p. 369) Compare and contrast two explanations of the mediation of social disorder."
That is confusing to start with. I have looked in several dictionaries and asked a few people and none of them mentioned anything about "the way things are represented to us" so it was difficult to write about mediation in that context when you've grown up believing it means something completely different.
Then we find out a week before it's due in via email from student support that despite the fact three scientists are mentioned in the booklet, it's a specific two we need to focus on, which screwed a lot of people who picked the wrong ones.
Finally, the only information on the topic was across two pages in the textbook and a conversation in an audio clip.
Well long story short half of the people enrolled on the module have sent angry emails to student support because this is the most important essay of the module and they've picked a topic with so little information available. I agree it's pretty ridiculous but at the same time... I managed it? Maybe I did it wrong. It took me a long five hours and a lot of stress but I did manage eventually.
So I'm free! I'll find out at the end of July sometime how I did on that and my final essay for Discovering Psychology.
Now to celebrate I'm spending the weekend with Naomi. This is a big thing, we haven't been together through the weekend for two years. I spent Friday and Saturday night with her not long after we got together. Since then, nothing. I work weekends.
But I got this weekend off. And we were supposed to go camping in Inverness together. Until we saw what the train fares were...
SO we're camping out in her bed.
We're going on holiday five weeks on Sunday! We go to Center Parcs every year, but in two weeks, they're opening up a new one in Woburn Forest so since it's the last one the UK are going to have, it's a once in a lifetime chance, so we're going there instead of to Sherwood Forest where we usually go. The UK has a lot of forests, there are three others in Elveden, Longleat, and Whinfell.
I'm really excited about it, I can finally look forward to summer now that my essays are gone and I have nothing to worry about. That was long and rambly.
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