On Sunday, I decided to go through my assignment for Cleopatra and Doctor Faustus. I was having a little trouble with both parts of the assignment for different reasons. With the Cleopatra part of my assignment, I had so much to say and so many ideas that I was finding it hard to condense this into less than 500 words without compromising on the quality of my argument. With Doctor Faustus, I was finding it hard to get above 400 words without waffling.
In the end, I managed to get the assignment completed in 475 and 455 words respectively. I sent it off this afternoon so that's it now, until I have to revisit again in a month's time for my second assignment (a reflective assignment and reworking of the first).
I've also finished working through Faraday (Chapter 4) and started on Stalin (Chapter 5) which puts me about three weeks in front on my studies...
I had a shock yesterday morning when I got home from the shops. My Internet wouldn't work! I phoned Virgin to find out why - a call that lasted almost half an hour and cost me the full £10 that I'd just topped up. Apparently, the £30 I'd paid off my bill hadn't gone through in time as I'd paid using PayPoint. Anyway, it meant that yesterday I had no internet... no email... no jobseeking... no Open University... and shock, horror, NO FACEBOOK!!!
It did mean that I could get on with a bit of reading and writing. I read a little more about Faraday but I'm still struggling to take in all the science bumph. As this reading isn't essential for the assignments, I may just skip it and move on to Stalin. I also finished reading 'Moon Over Soho' by Ben Aaronovitch, which is about a Detective Constable who is also an apprentice Wizard. Next up is 'The Windup Girl' by Paolo Bacigalupi.
As for the writing... I did a little tweaking of my Cleopatra/Faustus assignment. I edited some of the information in my CVs. I also wrote two poems about yesterday's ordeals with Virgin. The bulk of my time yesterday though, was taken up writing the first draft of the first chapter of a story I've been thinking about for years called 'The Leeds Witch'. Please DO read them, and as always, your comments and advice are gratefully received...
After writing last night's blog, I decided to have a go at writing some blank verse in 'Iambic Pentameter' and after a bit of trial and error, I managed to write a poem (click here). I've been a bit hit and miss with my poems since I started looking at the materials for this course, and I'm afraid it's going to stay that way.
Anyway, on to today. I've finally started on Chapter 4 - Fame and Faraday. So far so good. I'm enjoying reading about his life, and how he became a famous name through the 19th Century. However, upon scanning through the rest of the chapter, I've noticed there's quite a lot about his experiments. I realise that these contributed to his fame but I'm surprised to see them in an 'arts' course. Oh well, time to put my science head on...
