The patchwork of my life

..hmm can you tell where my current obsessions are lying?

Currently in my 'other' life as a crafter, I am making not one but four patchwork quilts of one type or another.

Sewing the seeds of another quilty idea!!

But the word 'patchwork' suddenly and inexplicably threw me back, mentally speaking anyway, to an old post about work-life-study balance, and its differing interpretations.

So I have a mental image of a 3-coloured quilt, featuring something relating to work, something relating to life and something relating to study.  I don't see the colours clearly yet but just thought that I would share it with myself and the world in general.  Just to prove that there is indeed life outside the washing basket, and even outside of the study.

Maybe I'll make it one day to celebrate my graduation and all the journey has meant to me.

Is it because I'm a student?

Or is it simply 'being a woman'?

What is she talking about this time?  Why, the 'ping' of the guilt-radar of course.

Is that a TMA I see on the horizon?

When is a bath not a bath?  When it's a study-bath of course.  Sometimes the reality of being a distance-learning student is that you have to find time from anywhere and everywhere you can in order to cram it all in.  Which leads to studying on the bus, in the bath, in your lunch-break, on the loo etc etc.

Which is all well and good, till you just want 'a bath'.  But up pings that radar - oh you are going in the bath, you could take in Unit 10 and learn while you are in there.  So, do you give in to the desire for just some 'me time' that doesn't include the OU in any way, and lie there feeling guilty the whole time, or do you give into the guilt and take the studies in the bath, and then lie there feeling badly done to because you didn't get what you wanted?  There are no right answers for this one, and on the odd occasion I have been known to do none of it because I couldn't do any of it without feeling guilty in some way (and yeah I think that just might be being a woman), so I take the huff and achieve nothing instead.

But mostly I've taken to bargaining with myself - 'Ok, if you do parts 4 and 5 then if you still want to quilt/bathe/garden/blog etc, then you can do it without the guilt'.  So far, it works not too badly, most of the time.

The only exception is the toilet - when you gotta go you gotta go, as they say.  But the only rule there is 'you gotta come back'.

The calm....before the storm?

OK - this is just weird!!

"What?", you say - well let me tell you 'what' - I have 4 days to go on the final TMA deadline, and only one day's worth of work left to do.  And I don't feel panicked about it!!

I'm going to blame (or thank) the homeopathy - been taking some stuff to help with 'women stuff' and stress - and by jingo, something must be working!!  Normally by this time of the course, the washing basket is empty, the personal projects are flying along and I am a nervous wreck!  But this time around, the washing basket is still empty (proof that TMA procrastination fairy is still around then), I've been working helter-skelter on a new patchwork quilt project (still some procrastination), but I'm still in possession of most of my marbles, I don't want to lie down in a darkened room and die quietly, and I have 4 days to go with 1 small part of a question to do.

Odd....all very very ...odd!!

(I just keep waiting for the punchline - like there must be something I have missed?  The calm almost always precedes the storm in my life - what's getting ready to happen or fall on my head?)

PMA for a TMA

OK, staying positively positive today - reached the end of Question 2 on TMA3 - halfway house!  19 days left to cram in 2 units worth of study and 2 questions - eeek!  But I can do it, I will do it, I have got this far already.  (On the plus side, Question 2 was a non-practical question, as much as I love the programming side, it was actually nice to just type out an answer and know that was it.  The problem with the programming questions is not actually the programming part...it's writing it all up and copying and pasting a whole load of code into your solution file - using a different font for all the code parts!  I get more annoyed at my perceived inabilities in Word than I ever do at the 'challenges' posed by Java!!)

Not my shed...or a halfway house.....but I'm sure the spiders still love it!!

On to reading the next unit, and therefore time to decant to the bathroom (the quietest most private spot to study in the house, short of locking myself in the shed with the giant spiders).

Sometimes the end of a course gets a bit like that, it's cram in the studies for the bits you need to know for the assignment, then hope you can pick it all up again when it comes to revision time.  (More eek!)

Revision will be a post all of its own I reckon.  And will have to wait till the assignment is finished, my student-guilt radar is pinging at the thought even of typing this blog post.  (hmm cue another blog topic there me-thinks!!)

And the winner is....

....M364 Fundamentals of Interaction Design

I have finally weeded through the varied options available, read and re-read the reviews till I am blue and purple in the face, and made the all-important decision of "What next?".

The reviews were all positive, although there seems to be a high emphasis on essay-writing and remembering facts, I think the psychological aspects of the course (why is a good design a good design, what makes users read a website in a certain way etc) sound interesting.  In addition, I think the reading based course might actually allow a little more combination with personal hygiene (yes I study in the bath...) and thus do my sanity good. Some reviews have even suggested that it's easier than some other Level 3 courses.  (But that may well depend on perspective so I won't take that as a certainty in my case)

I believe that I may then go to the Level 1 compulsory course after that to finish off the 'main' part of my degree, leaving just two more Level 3 ones for the Honours part, having also had a little while for more of the new Level 3 courses to rear their heads and give me choices aplenty.

Rebel without a cause

OK, the procrastination fairy was obviously just delayed in her arrival!  Along with the hot weather the post-assignment slump is trying to put me off my new-found enthusiasm, and is succeeding very well at the task.  It's hitting temperatures of 30-ish degrees out there, and so the computer room (which is normally an icebox for most of the year) has suddenly become a greenhouse, and me a tomato plant with insufficient water!

I've hit that point of chaos, where both the washing basket and the studies are getting the cold shoulder (OK hot shoulder this week!!), all I want to do is play on the PS3 or stitch patchwork or cross-stitch or knit (or generally find time for my many craft projects).

Trying to keep up with the studies in one way or another though, even if it's only by taking the course reading materials in the bath to cool down with.

Oh I can barely remember the good old days, when I could read a book or magazine in the bath, play games to my hearts content, and still have time left over for crafts.  Really looking forward to that break over winter, with no studies to do I might catch up on the washing and the crafts (whilst wishing the next course would hurry up and start, no doubt - such is the fickleness of the human mind).

Hoping I can shift this slump quickly, only 32 days to the next assignment.  Crikey!  And then it's down to revision for the exam in October.

Out with the old, in with the new..

Waiting for my lightbulb moment..

Somehow, my brain is stuck on the question of "What Next?" - feeling unsettled without particularly good reason at the moment.

I'm into the final 3rd of this course (M362), and whilst I am getting good (OK, great) results on the assignments, somehow I am feeling a massive lack of confidence towards the exam, due in October.

And I think that lack of confidence (how will I do in my first Level 3 exam?) is hindering the choice of next course.  Add that to the ever-changing goalposts that is the OU's syllabus, and my brain is battered.

(Hence the reasonably empty washing basket - I can cope with that without thought...).

A lot of courses are coming to an end in 2014 - so it will be my last chance to take a few of them.  We have M363, M364, M359, or M366, along with a couple of others that I like the sound of but that I should have preceded with appropriate Level 2 courses.  These are being replaced from October 2014, but we don't have sufficient details as to 'with what' to allow for the most accurate decision making in the next few months.

I've never felt as though I didn't know my next step in this OU journey, and I'm finding that lack of direction difficult at the minute.  And I don't think I can afford to wait to see if I pass this course first before signing up for the next one, as it would leave it too late for any financial assistance applications.

Will I have that lightbulb moment?  I sure hope so.