Another OU year is over so I decided to blog about my progress so far with my degree. I understand that there's probably quite a few friends of mine who don't really know what it is I'm doing with my life, either because I haven't taken the time to enthuse about my education, or because we're not in close touch these days so they may have lost track of what I'm up to.
So, I started studying with the Open University after I left Aberystwyth, in November 2002. Initially I just wanted to keep studying, keep my brain from going idle. So I got a prospectus for 2003, as the Open University year runs from February to October, leaving the winter free for the majority of OU students who are mature and with families etc, the timing couldn't have been better. I picked a course that looked interesting, it was A211: Philosophy and the Human Situation. It was a 60 credit course (which I'll explain more about in a minute) starting in February 2003 and concerned six areas of contemporary philosophy; the acceptable limits of individual freedom; attitudes towards animals; environmental ethics; Darwinism and human nature; mind and matter; and philosophy of religion. It was a really interesting course that I did enjoy, but adjusting to OU study wasn't easy, I fell behind and found it difficult to catch up. I also did really badly in the exam and my overall result was what the OU call a "Grade 4 pass", basically a 3rd in traditional university marking schemes.
But I had got the bug and fallen in love with the subject, so I decided to get my degree (after having dropped out of my Drama, Film & TV Studies BA) the long way, part time.
So here's how the OU works. You can study courses of a certain number of credits, 10, 30 or 60. The most you can take in one year is 120 credits worth, this is the same as full time study at a bricks & mortar university. Those of you with degrees or currently studying will recognise this credit system as the same as traditional universities and will likely remember picking out modules of 30/60 credits to fill a year or semester.
Each course you take you can designate a qualification you want it to count towards and they offer a huge range of these, from diplomas (usually 120 credits), to open degrees (300 or 360 credits and with no subject, just a mesh of courses from all faculties), to named degrees like you would get from a bricks & mortar uni. I decided to go for a named degree, it will be BA (Hons.) Humanities with Religious Studies - because for some reason they lump loads of subjects together under Humanities and that's how they name their degrees. When I put it on my CV and tell people what my degree is in I will leave out the "Humanities" part! It will be 360 credits (that's what the Honours part is) and will be made up of 3 60 credit courses in Religious Studies, 2 60 credit courses in Philosophy and 1 60 credit compulsory course that I have to do to get the named degree.
The OU divide courses into three levels to denote difficulty and workload. I didn't bother with any level 1 courses as I had come directly from university education and none of the OU's level 1 courses interested me as they were all so vague. "Introduction to Humanities" was the obvious one and it covered everything from English Lit to History to Classical Studies. Yuck, too woolly for me. And to build a degree you don't need any level 1 courses, you need at least 120 credits each from levels 2 and 3. Are you still with me?!
So, in my second year (2004) I took A213: World Religions. As you might guess, this course consisted of the study of the six major world religions. It also looked at three core issues facing those religions; sacred space, making moral decisions and women in religion. Without boring anyone on the details these three issues made up the second half of the course, while the basics in beliefs, organisation, religious practice etc. was the first half. I did well in my assignments over the year, securing an average of 66%.... but failed my exam. Me and exams have never mixed well. So I failed the course, but was entitled to resit the exam.
Now, rather than having a second exam session in, say February or something, the OU make you wait a whole year and do the exam with the following year's students and they make you use up the number of credits of the course in question. So in my case, a 60 credit course, meant that I could do another 60 credits alongside my resit, but no more (max 120 a year, remember?) So for 2005 I applied for the resit and another course, AD317: Religion Today: Tradition, Modernity and Change, determined to stay on track for completing in 6 years.
Despite a very healthy 74 for my first assignment, I ran into trouble with this course quite early and ended up dropping it in May. I did nothing for a few months then in September began intensive revision for my resit exam. One month later I sat my exam and got really lucky with one question: I had happened to revise precisely the right thing the day before and the answer flowed very easily *smug grin*. But apart from that one answer I didn't feel too confident. Me and exams etc... Results time arrived in mid-December and I nearly had a heart attack on seeing that I had achieved 77% in the exam, was in the top 2% for my course nationwide and had got between 85-100% on that lucky question! That meant that I had secured a comfortable 1st for my second course, although the OU call it a "Grade 2 pass", a "grade 1" being over 85%.
So, into 2006 and I started again with the course I had dropped the previous year, AD317. This was a level 3 course, studying the intensive changes occurring in religion globally over the last century. It looked at the role of the internet; the role of religion on social transformations; the concept of a civil religion (Princess Diana, war memorials etc.); the patterns and differences in global and local belief and practice; and new religious movements such as Paganism.
Yeah, that last topic was tough. I thought I would love it and excel with my incredible knowledge of the subject. But no. I learned a few cold, hard truths about modern Paganism and had to seriously reassess my position on its history. But I feel better for it, difficult though it was, I feel empowered now that I'm not labouring under false impressions and have become more involved in the online community of Pagans because of it, making some interesting acquaintances. This course didn't have an exam, instead it had what the OU call an ECA - extended course assignment. It was a 5000 word essay concluding the course, the question I chose was about the role of religion in having an informed understanding of the modern world. Now I'm waiting for my results. I know I did really well in the normal assignments, my average mark being above 80%, I need 58% in the ECA to get a 1st for this year. I should be getting my result in a week or so and I'm pretty damn nervous about it.
Now then, the quick among you will have noticed that it has taken me 4 years to complete 3 courses. So in order to finish this thing in just 2 more years, I have registered for 120 credits next year. 2007 is going to be very, very hard. Both 60 credit courses are level 3, they are AA300: Europe: Culture and Identities in a Contested Continent and AA307: Religion in History: Conflict, Conversion and Coexistence.
The first is my compulsory course to get the named degree, it is essentially a European politics course, but I think it looks interesting. I had a choice of three courses for this compulsory bit and the other two looked appallingly dull, this one has some grit to it and will hopefully be relevant to my overall degree as it touches on religion in places, as well as concepts such as globalization, which I've studied already in this year's course.
The second is my final RS course and I can't wait to look at the conversion of Rome to Christianity and the Crusades, two time periods I have never studied before. It also covers the Reformation and Britain post WWII - which I also studied this year, secularization theory here I come again! (It's bull shit btw, the world ain't secularizing, not by a long shot. We like to think it is because Britain is, but look outside north-western Europe and religion is growing very rapidly and isn't detaching itself from the state.) The first batch of materials arrived last Friday and I got stuck in over the weekend, reading the introduction and getting started on the notes and exercises. There's nothing like an early start to thses things, especially when tackling two of the buggars in one year!
This will leave me with one more course to do in 2008, another philosophy course to finish what I started - what can I say? I like symmetry. AA308: Thought and Experience: Themes in Philosophy of the Mind. It covers emotion; thought and language; imagination and creativity; and consciousness. I can't wait for that one!
And as for life after the OU, well, my fellow students and I sometimes discuss this subject, for many studying with the OU becomes an obsession, they never leave but continue to study and learn, whether earning qualifications or not. It becomes such a big part of your life and I think OU students are sort of united in a way I've never found with bricks & mortar uni students. Many friends for life are made and the support we provide each other with gets to be a serious crutch! SOme of my friends on this course this year were finishing their degrees with it and towards the end of the year they turned very nostalgic. A few did actually say that even though they were finishing their degrees, they might just take a 10 credit course next year, just to keep it going a little longer. It's something about it taking 6 years, it's a big chunk of your life. It's hard to let go.
Others go into teaching or other career changes. Me? Well, this whole thing started just because I wanted a degree, any degree! Now I love my subject, I love it so much I am already looking at MAs and PhDs... not with the OU, but with bricks & mortar unis. I just want to keep on going. We'll see what happens, I'm also thinking about teaching for a few years before embarking on post grad study.
So guys, I will almost certainly need all your help and support next year if I'm going to succeed and get the high marks I have become accustomed to! Hopefully now, a few people will *get* what I'm up to and how hard I am actually working, despite being intermittently unemployed and constantly poor.
Love to all
xxx
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