done!

I can hardly believe it, but it's done: I've handed in the final piece of my final course in my BSc (Hons) Psychology degree with the OU. I can now do no more towards it and can only sit back and wait for the result.

The OU has been a big part of my life. I've been studying towards it for five out of the past six years. With the exception of a few months over the winter (some years), I have always had an assignment or other to fret over. Although this is no PhD, I can well imagine what that must be like - the hours toiling, the never-endingness of the whole thing, the plugging away and plugging away, year upon year, the despondency at those moments when it all looks so impossible to finish, the gut-wrenching nerves and fear of not being able to do it, the wondering whethere you've even got what it takes.

And now it's done. Part of me thinks: Wow, 5 years of work! And while holding down a full time job that isn't even related to the degree too! But another side is already belittling it all with snarky remarks like: sheesh, it's only a degree. Dumb 18year olds manage it. Just about every other person has a degree, so it's not something to be all that proud of.

But right now, I AM proud, dammit. I didn't do this at a bricks and mortar university with lectures and handy tutors to go over my assignments with, no campus with a library, no student services, no being able to immerse myself into the topic (I get a taste of what real uni must be like from summer schools). It's been me and textbooks and an online forum of other busy people trying to juggle it all.

I can hardly believe I've done it.

Ceps maniac

Yesterday was a sunny, fresh autumn day that had immediately followed a wet day. Those are the ideal conditions for a bit of mushrooming. You can tell when mushroom conditions are perfect: lots of waterlogged cow pats, preferably with a shiny little pool of water on top. This is not where mushrooms are found but watery cowpats are a good omen.

So, with such perfect conditions, the Sous Chef and I decided to go out and see what we could find for our  mushroom risotto. He was particularly keen to find some Penny Bun Boletes (Ceps or Porcini mushrooms) but other boletes would be fine, too. Boletes are not like the mushrooms with ridges or gills underneath their caps, a bolete's underside looks like a sponge, with lots of pores. We tend to find beech and birch boletes, and slippery jack (another good 'un), but it's ceps that are the best.  When it comes to other mushrooms, the gilled sort, we have a few set favourites that we can recognise with confidence but we also took along two books on mushrooms to help with identification on some borderline cases. These gilled types are the ones that contain the deadly-poisonous varieties so while boletes are pretty safe, with the others you have to be sure. Really sure. (some make you feel unwell, others can kill you without warning. Kidney failure). So you have to be sure.

Through the first half of the walk we found lots of interesting but sadly inedible mushrooms and a few poisonous ones, too. We collected some unknown ones to check the sporeprint (place the cap on a sheet of paper, check an hour later what colour spores it drop. This can help narrow it down a bit) but that was just for scientific curiosity, not for eating. It was getting late and still no ceps. The Sous Chef was getting increasingly anxious to find some ceps ("you're ceps mad, you are")and eventually we were not disappointed. We found four remarkable specimens and felt extremely pleased with our find. Woodland wildlife likes a penny bun bolete as much as we do, so they often get pretty nibbled but we found some in good condition.

It was some time later we bumped into a group of 6 walkers who had a basket chock FULL of boletes. It put our meagre find into the shade. But hey - we had three large boletes and a small one, enough for our risotto and any more would just be greedy.

A train ride home and a hot bath followed by a creamy wild mushroom risotto, cooked with the day's find. Delicious! I flippin' love autumn.

the post-exam deadzone

It's all been a little intense with my revision these past two months (or so it seems to me. The Sous Chef seems to think I did rather little revision, noting one weekend where I did no more than 40 minutes - I think he thinks I only revise when he can see me).

Every evening has seen me finish my dinner, put my cutlery neatly together and sigh, as I know I must now go upstairs and hit the books again. My heart would usually sink a little bit.  Last night, I finished dinner and realised: I don’t need to do any revising tonight! It felt strange not to be doing any. I read parts of the chapter on autism (for my other course) but to not have to grapple with critical social psychology was a bit strange. I missed it, really.

Looking back over the course, I realise I only truly ‘got’ it in these last two months. Perhaps it is the condensing down of notes that makes the topic small enough to see the bigger picture. Or maybe it just has to be studied twice. First slowly to unpack it and then again as revision to smoosh it all together again, fitting all the parts together.

All those things I have put off to do ‘after the exam’ now seem a lot less appealing once their procrastinatory potential is removed. It seems for me to ever do anything, I need something even worse I should be doing instead.  At least I have the big trip to concentrate on next. I fear I shall be one of those perpetual OU students, always doing some course or other. If I didn’t, how else would I get the house clean/bake stuff/paint the back room/sort the filing out if I didn’t have TMAs to procrastinate over?

Yesterday's Exam

I’ve spent the past two weeks talking nonsense, about interrogative themes, intersubjectivity and interpretative reportoires. Not to mention the paranoid-schizoid position, the pre-reflexive self and the quoting of opinions of existentialist philosophers such as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Heidegger.
This revision has driven the Sous Chef potty, as he tries to seem interested. Later stages saw him test me on concepts, theories, studies but mostly, what I need more than anything to get a decent mark in this course, is the right-sounding waffle. Psychology generally, has been dominated by the scientific, statistically significant, replicable results type psychology but this course has been the voice for the qualitative, touchy-feel, airy-fairy, postmodernistic waffle side of psychology. It’s driven me batty but in the last three weeks it all started to make some sense.
The exam was yesterday morning. One chap was severely reprimanded for bringing his revision notes to the exam desk (admittedly, he was found reading them before the exam had actually started but even so. How desperate and/or stupid is that?)
The exam was three questions in three hours. Each part had a choice of two questions and you chose one from each section. As soon as I read the options, all the information fell out of my head. I went totally blank.
I ate some fruit pastilles to calm myself down and read the questions again. I kept re-reading them and realised I was getting nowhere so just started to scribble some notes for a plan on the first page.
I wrote out three essay plans/brain dumps in the first half hour (I like to get all the info out before I start any proper essay writing) spaced apart to allow essay space between for about three sides of essay and then set to it, 50 minutes for each essay.
The first essay was on unconscious and conscious processes in the formation of subjectivity and started on it. I’d got about half way and checked the time: it had been only 15 minutes! the time was going really slowly, I had plenty of time, so I relaxed and started to enjoy myself.  Yes, I was enjoying the exam!
The second essay was on attitudes  and the last on intra-group processes. I was doing swell until somewhere, midway through the final essay, just as I was starting to critical evaluate the theory of Groupthink (Janis, 1972) that I totally lost the plot. Mid-paragraph I had no idea what I was going to say next, no point to bring out and I was in a dead-end.  One packet of Rolos later and I decided just to change the subject to Phenomenology, drag in some stuff from a chapter on the Fundamental Attribution Error (something about not splitting the world into discrete objects but looking at individual/group identities as a whole rather than separate things) and at 5 minutes before the end, wrote “run out of time“, added some bullet points of good ideas and a quick conclusion that may or may not have had anything to do with the preceding essay.
Ok, so that last essay went rather badly, but I did manage two decentish essays before that. On the strength of my previous exams and assignment, I would need only 55% or better for a 2:1 (a First is sadly out of the question, as I didn’t get a high enough grade average in my assignments – a tutor who declared herself a ‘tough marker’ back in February made me doubt I’d manage a First anyway, so it’s not a big surprise). I won’t hear what my exam result until 18th December, but with a threshold as low as 55%, which I achieved for sure, there’s no need for nailbiting.
Just one more assignment (a biggish one, due 24th November) and my degree will be finished. Hurrah!

Who is in charge of the Universe?I have a complaint.

The Sous Chef and I wanted to go away somewhere warm with our bicycles. Since the summer is off (due to my studies) it'll have to be in winter that we go away (and I have two weeks off work at Christmas - unpaid, mind).

After much thought and impatient jabbing of fingers on the world map on our kitchen wall (yes, we have a map of the world on our kitchen wall. Doesn't everybody?) we decided on


I admit, it's a long way to go for a curry but we did some research and the southern tip of India is doable by bike. I have been going out of my mind chasing the best fares possible to Chennai (used to be named Madras). If you know of a site that does low cost flights, trust me, I've checked it, rung the number, sent an email.

On top of chasing prices I have also collected a vast store of knowledge regarding the bicycle policy (the taking thereof) of numerous airlines. It ranging from "Free" to "150 Euros each way, with some including and others not including it in your 20Kg baggage allowance. I have spoken to staff at numerous airlines to check their policy.

Yesterday, checking for more flights while researching the cycle policies the 'best offer' that looked the one most likely we'd take DISAPPEARED. The prices went up by about £200 each! This was starting to unravel so I spent most of yesterday getting cross-eyed comparing prices, checking flight/transit times and cycle policies once more and found a BETTER price. WOohoo (so far so good, Person-in-Charge-Of-The-Universe).

I've had airplanes on the brain, so for some light relief I head to Youtube and in the area marked "Recommended for You" the top video is:


footage of a Garuda aircraft crash taken by a survivor.


erm. thanks Youtube. The recommended section usually has items similar to stuff I've watched. That means it generally has salsa, some Indonesian tv programmes, animated short films from the Vancouver Film School and the usual assortment of cute kittens and laughing babies. I'm not in the habit of watching plane crashes, especially not just before going on a long-haul flight.

my exam is today

It is the morning of my exam. In 4 hours' time I'll be sat at a desk, unwrapping my polo mints and wondering whether I maybe should have gone to loo after all..

The Sous Chef has been testing my knowledge with revision sheets. I can remember shitloads of stuff about Cognitive Psychology. I thought I knew nothing, but I woke up at 4 am this morning and (of course!) found myself unable to go back to sleep. So I dredged up all my revised material and was aghast: it really is in there! Amazing. The skill in the exam will be applying what I know to answer the question (not to be taken for granted, but at least I know stuff)

What else has amazed me is how much the Sous Chef now knows about Cognitive Psychology. It's very tedious for him but he's been marvelous in testing me and listening to me blather on about the phonological loop and visuospatial scratchpad of working memory. He knows more than most about subliminal priming, Biederman's geons and can tell you the difference between agnosia, prosopagnosia and aphasia. He might even be able to tell you where the parietal lobes are and what the amygdala is for. Definitely NOT things he particularly wanted to know about. I suppose I should be thankful I'm not doing a degree in Geology (snore) or Theology (yawn) or Art History. I can whitter on about my subject of choice for blooming hours! (Hopefully up to three, which is how long the exam is).

Anyway, I am prepared. I feel confident I can do this. My biggest problem will be staying focused for that length of time (1.5 hours is about my limit for keeping on task). Wish me luck!

What is consciousness for?

that, folks, was the totally not at all vague title of my final essay for this Cognitive Psychology course. I can’t blog much about its contents because of plagiarism (we get into trouble if we make that kind of thing available) but maybe I’ll create a private little area where I can shove all my old essays and ideas and notes and password protect it or something.

The course has been fascinating, its been difficult and it’s been excruciating at times. But overall I’ve enoyed it. All that is left now is the exam in three weeks’ time. Less than a month until… GOOD GOD! LESS THAN A MONTH?!!? HOLY CRAP! HOW THE HECK AM I GOING TO CONVINCE AN EXAMINER I ACTUALLY STUDIED THIS COURSE?!!

If I’m caught blogging, shout at me for procrastinating. I shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near my (or your) blog until after 5.30 pm 13th October.

now excuse me while I go have a panic attack in the corner over there.