Bad Faery

Monday, March 03, 2008

U211 - TMA01 Part the second - done

I got the second part of my TMA finished tonight about an hour before the deadline- cutting it fine as ever.

It’s a bit of mess, I can see all omissions that are going to cost me marks but as usual time is my enemy. It’s been such a long, eventful week that I didn’t get nearly as much time to work on the assignment as I would have liked and having to work late on Saturday night didn’t help.

For the second part of the assignment I had to write a response to another participant’s essay. I didn’t even get around to choosing one until after work late Saturday night, leaving me with only Sunday to do some research. And as libraries aren’t opened on Sundays I had to rely on the internet alone. I think I need to enroll in a course on being more organised!

I did enjoy a tiny moment triumph when I had a Balderdash and Piffle moment.

Balderdash and Piffle, for those not of these parts, was a BBC2 TV show which invited the viewing public to help trace the history of an assortment of words and then try and persuade the Oxford English Dictionary to rewrite their entry if any new evidence was found.

The word I chose was dated by the OED to the 1950s but I uncovered a newspaper article using it in 1945! I rule at research! And yes, I know that getting excited over this is excessively nerdy but what the hey we are all allowed our moments of geeky nerdiness!

Talking of the OED, one of the bonuses of being an Open University student is that you’re allowed free access to the online edition which if you like words is the BEST-THING-EVER!

There is a trick to logging in so listen up if you are a visiting OU student who hasn’t figured this out yet.

On the OED homepage:
>click on “Athens sign in
>click on “alternative log-in
>find the Open University on the list of university names
>click the “remember this organisation on this computer” (makes logging in a bit less longwinded for next time)
>click the “Go to the Open University login page”
>log in using your OU name and password as per normal
>and you’re in! Millions of words and their meanings at your fingertips! And no danger of breaking your toes by dropping a great big heavy dictionary on them.

After posting the second part of assignment on the tutor group forum as per instructions I went ahead and pasted the two parts together to form my TMA proper and submitted it to my tutor.

So there we have it. My first U211 assignment officially signed off on, 6 more plus a big scary exam to go!

In other OU news, my lovely Certificate in Humanities from my previous course A103 arrived in the post today, so now you can call me Bad Faery, Cert Hum (Open)!

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