Science starts here for me...

My S154 course material arrived today. I wasn’t home when it was delivered so my lovely neighbour June took it in for me as she always does, and when she brought it round she said something like “are you not finished with your studying yet?”

I chuckled and said “Oh no June, I’ll never be finished”. I’m not sure she would’ve quite understood what I as implying but in saying it I meant that I’ll probably continue to study for as long as brain cells and finances will allow, as opposed to insinuating that I’ll never finish whatever it is she thinks I’m working towards.

This science short course (SSC to those in the know) is going to be a bit of a challenge for me. I’m a humanities and social sciences girl, and as many people keep pointing out to me, social science is a different kettle of fish to physical science so I think this may be a bit of a culture shock.

I wasn’t bad at science in school; at GCSE level I was in the lower set and was predicted a C as to get any higher than that on the intermediate paper is very difficult, but I somehow managed to get a B so my skill at science must’ve been okay. As the years rolled on and I started my OU degree I assumed I would still be good at science and registered for a level 2 science module (not level 3 as I’ve previously said in posts) but it was an astronomy module and physics was always the worst of the three sciences for me so I failed miserably at the first hurdle and dropped out after a few weeks. I always harboured a secret desire to give it another go so when plans for the masters came into force I thought ‘what better way to get me into science again than with the SSCs and what better SSC to begin with than S154 – Science Starts Here’.

 

'So I had the obligatory flick through and my gaze fell upon a page with a picture of a cucumber and some instructions on how to measure it. True story.'

 

So here I am with a big thick module book, DVD and assignment booklet. I’m sure I’m not the only OU student who gets a five minute flush of excitement and anticipation when new module materials arrive and has a random flick through the book and a quick read of TMA questions to see if they make any sense to you before you’ve even started (never try that with philosophy modules, I guarantee you’ll have no clue if they’re even written in English!). So I had the obligatory flick through and my gaze fell upon a page with a picture of a cucumber and some instructions on how to measure it. True story. I suspect that because the module focuses on the topic of ‘water for life’ we’re asked to measure the water in it or some such activity. I’m looking forward to it already!

For a 10 point module the text book is actually much bigger than I expected and I’ve heard that the SSCs aren’t exactly a walk in the park so I’ll have to bear that in mind when I’m planning my time. Since it’s just a level 1 module I’m hoping it’ll be the kind of book I can fetch into work and read a few pages of easily without having to concentrate too much. Level 3 philosophy was terrible for that, you had to REALLY concentrate on the books to fully grasp them and even then I had to re-read some bits!

So we’ll see how I get on. I shouldn’t really be thinking about starting it yet though, T122’s EMA is due in three weeks and my masters starts in two weeks (oh good lord, that’s just hit me like a tonne of bricks that has!), so I have more important things to worry about in the meantime.

Oh god. Two weeks. *gulp*