Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

Yes, I know I’m late with the new masthead (F5 to hard-refresh, if you can’t see it), but I was true to my word and now my God-Forsaken cush­ion has been immor­tal­ised for all etern­ity. Or something.

Octo­ber, once again, brings the start of yet more Open Uni­ver­sity–themed adven­tures. Hav­ing just star­ted 2 new courses (my 9^th and 10^th course since Octo­ber 2003, respect­ively) and signed up for 2 more due to start 2007-ish. It seems the OU bug has bit­ten and is now snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug, and here to stay.

I’m cur­rently attempt­ing to devise a way of show­cas­ing my pro­gress whilst giv­ing a bit of per­sonal insight into OU life, here on this site (amongst all other things on my “To-Do” list). Until such a thing mater­i­al­ises, I thought I might at least give you a bit of a win­dow into what it is that I spend my time doing in-between blog posts, should you be interested.

I’ve just begun the lat­ter half of an HEC in Inform­a­tion Tech­no­logy & Com­put­ing, hav­ing just com­pleted the exams for the former-half last week. (Res­ults not til Xmas… Bug­ger.) The other course is a short mod­ule on “Mal­ware and Van­dal­ism in Cyberspace”.

You see, I’m doing it all arse-first, such is my nature. The qual­i­fic­a­tion com­prises of Level 1 courses which, you’re sup­posed to do first. Only, I did this first because it was my pri­or­ity at the time and I hadn’t decided whether to do a degree or not.

Now I’ve decided, cue me now back-tracking to build-up credit towards a BSc Open Degree, but I haven’t decided if I want Hon­ours with it or not.

I know this sounds very unor­gan­ised and inde­cis­ive, don’t be fooled. I know exactly what I want in prin­ciple and that is: “to do what I enjoy, for as long as I enjoy it”.

Life’s too short to slave away doing some­thing you now dis­like just because you feel oblig­ated to lay in a pro­ver­bial bed that you made years ago. The Open Uni­ver­sity gives me the free­dom to study what I find inter­est­ing for as long as it interests me. I can mix and match Com­put­ing with Pho­to­graphy and Eng­lish with Maths or Psy­cho­logy, or even Busi­ness with Ancient Greek and it will all still count towards one com­mon goal. I won­der how many other top-ranking UK Uni­ver­sit­ies can offer the same level of flexibility?

To stop myself from being driven crack­ers by the “techie-ness” of it all (I’ve been study­ing tech­no­logy courses solid since 2003), I’ve decided that 2007 should be a cre­at­ive year and have opted for this pho­to­graphy course and this writ­ing fic­tion course.

I’m really excited about the pho­to­graphy course, it will be the first time I’ve stud­ied pho­to­graphy since my A levels, only this time instead of “tra­di­tional” black and white pho­to­graphy, it will be focused on digital pho­to­graphy — a whole new arena for me tech­nic­ally and aca­dem­ic­ally. I’m just hop­ing I can save up for a Digital SLR in time for the course-start.

I can’t help think­ing I’m mad sign­ing up for the writ­ing class; I’ve never really writ­ten fic­tion, I don’t even think I’ll be any good at it, but it seemed like a good new thing to try. I enjoy writ­ing and it would be good to learn some­thing new. The idea of the poetry or play-writing classes scared me stiff, the idea of writ­ing fic­tion didn’t intim­id­ate me so much, though I must admit to feel­ing very vuner­able at the idea of bar­ing the work­ings of my ima­gin­a­tion to strangers. It just makes me feel… fid­gety.

To help pre­pare for the writ­ing course, I am con­tem­plat­ing par­ti­cip­at­ing in NaNoWriMo. At least if it all goes tits-up I can use the course to find out where I went wrong!