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Thursday 16 February 2012

That Happy Feeling

This evening I am in my happy place. Today was TMA04 submission deadline for EA300 Children's Literature, one of the courses I am studying with the OU as part of my degree.

There's always this great feeling right after an assignment is completed and sent to my tutor, even when I don't feel that I've done very well. It's the thought that the stressful week of compiling extra notes, developing and argument, gathering quotes to provide evidence for your argument and sifting through it all to pull a 2000 word essay out of the bag in time (amidst a whole heap of self-doubt), is over. Not only is it over, but I wont be experiencing one of those weeks for at least another 3 less stressful ones! Woo hoo!

So am I happy with work I've turned in? I honestly don't know. I guess it read OK, but I'm very aware of a huge pile of very relevant notes and quotes that are sitting here abandoned due to word count. I didn't even have room to comment on dialogue, which I was sure was quite important. It's like anything you create yourself, firstly you tend to be over-critical of your own work because you can't view it objectively, secondly, you've just spent so many hours working on it, you're too close to it to see it with fresh eyes. I get Mr Bogert to read through, but he always just says "yeah, it's good". I'm not sure if this is because he wants to play it safe rather than offend me, or whether he's not really sure what I should be focusing on in my answer because he's never studied literature. Fingers crossed, I've turned in a good one. I never really do have much idea until the marks come back.

That's the next horrible bit of studying. The happiness of meeting the deadline passes, and instead you turn into this irritable F5-hitting monster as you keep checking the results page!

I am really enjoing this course though, the subjects we are covering are interesting, the set texts aren't so bad either. I would never have picked up Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry for myself, and even after hearing the terrible opinions other people on the course held of Swallows and Amazons, I did actually get into the story. I think it helped that I was prepared for the long drawn out beginning, so I just persevered.

For the assignment I just turned in, I actually chose Swallows and Amazons as one of the two set texts to evaluate. The second was Tom's Midnight Garden - love that book!



So, this evening is all calm and relaxation and a break from study (although I keep feeling guilty and thinking I should really go and pick my other course books up which I am a week behind with), instead I am watching CSI and finishing a crochet project that is a gift and needs to be finished, ummm, last month. Ooops.

Also, I think I actually deserve extra brownie points for wrapping a whole bunch of gifts for various people today ready to give out at the appropriate times. One is even for a party the Small Person has been invited to on 3rd March. Go me with the ahead planning! This may be the first time that I am not hurriedly wrapping the present on the arm of the sofa as everyone else heads out of the door, or worse still, in the car on the way there!

I also forgot to show this little item off:


This is the card the Small Person made for my cousin's new baby. I did some of the cutting out, but she did the design, chose the papers, and stuck it all how she envisioned it. Smart cookie, that little girl of mine :)

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