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Or: Taking working in isolation to a whole new level

Since some updated governmental guidance on the COVID-19 response, and a new (but completely normal) cough from our nursery-aged child, my family has been in self isolation, about a week and a half. Then last Friday most of my coworkers joined me as the schools were closed, then finally on Monday basically everybody did.

When the schools closed, there were major upheavals for all the universities in the nation … Except the OU. It had some small changes to make, such as the cancellation of face-to-face tutorials and day schools, email-only support from student services, and paper TMAs sent in the post rather than electronically won’t be marked until after schools are opened again.

But for the most part, it’s business as usual for the Open University. It is always. Open. Which is good and bad. Good that my studies won’t be directly impacted, but bad because they are now being severely indirectly impacted. I’ve gone from being a full time parent, full time employee, and part time student to being a full time parent, full time employee, full time home schooler/substitute live-in teacher, and 3/4-time student. And it’s brutal. I have no time for anything. Work is especially difficult, as I’m keeping remote-working resources running which were never intended to support absolutely everybody working from home.

And, of course, if something has to give, it’s university. It’s important for many people, but for me it’s literally just a hobby. (I’ve had more expensive ones which weren’t as fulfilling.) I gave myself a week to get through the TMA for M269, which would normally take a day and a half. I was up until 2 AM last night finishing it up for a due date of noon today. And I never went back to polish it up. It might just garner me a mark of 80, which would be an all-time low. For a subject I’m really good at. That’s how difficult it is to find a spare moment to focus on anything right now.

Other new hobbies include worrying where our next meal is coming from (in a literal sense, as I’ve struggled to find food delivery slots while isolating, and even family members helping have been unable to find basic provisions for us) and playing Which Civil Liberty Is Being Revoked every evening.

On the reals, though, people are running headlong into protecting everybody’s physical health due to a very real danger of death. Nobody seems to be mentioning that mental health is being completely ignored, and it can be just as deadly to some people. Take asking for help as seriously as you take washing your hands if you’re one of those people. And treat emotional security blankets as valuably as actual toilet roll.

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The biggest reason I keep this blog is so that people taking future versions of these modules have some clue as to what to expect from them. I’d planned on having a pretty detailed description of the day school experience, excluding the content of the activities and questions.

Due to measures aimed at slowing contraction of the COVID-19 Coronavirus, the OU has cancelled all face-to-face tutorials for the time being, including day schools.

The alternative learning experience (ALE) in place for people who couldn’t attend the day school for exceptional circumstances, such as disability, can’t be scaled to the necessary size required to accept all students for practical considerations. What we’ll be getting instead is just another Packet Tracer activity to run through. It also appears that we’ll be working on the activity individually, rather than in a group in real-time.

It’s a real shame that some people will be getting through this experience without ever having touched a non-consumer router or switch, but it’s certainly the right thing to do at this time. It’s also rather sad that students won’t experience group dynamics in network troubleshooting, as this is an excellent way to learn for both inexperienced and experienced network technicians. Teaching somebody is a great way to cement knowledge, and for me it makes sure I know it 100% as I don’t want to give out potentially bad information. Having incomplete information is fine if the worst case scenario is that I have to redo some work, it’s terrible if I’ve caused someone else to fail.

If anybody is taking this module and has a bit of cash lying around, you might want to look on eBay for Cisco test equipment kits, use it, then sell it on afterwards. It still won’t be the same, as you won’t be troubleshooting, for example, somebody using the wrong cable between two devices, but it will be better.

(Also, I can’t help but mention that I was going to be in Disney World the week after the day school for the first vacation I’ve been able to plan without extended family since before I got married 14 years ago. Disney World is now closed a couple of weeks before Easter, and will probably be closed over Easter when we were planning to go, too. My kids are disappointed, we’ve lost a few hundred pounds already, but hopefully it won’t be a few thousand, and we’re going to try again for Halloween. And we’ll definitely find a way to make it up to the kids.)

Anyway, if I don’t take a break next year, hopefully I’ll get a run-down of the day school then. Good luck all, stay safe, and wash your hands you filthy animals.

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TMA03 for TT284 is due today, and I just started it on Tuesday. Nothing like blind panic to keep your coding skills keen. I’m not really satisfied with how the assessment lined up with what the materials taught, but it did line up with the learning outcomes. It seems as though this block intended more robust independent study, which is fine, but the schedule was exceptionally tight if that was expected. If anybody reads this prior to a future pesentation of TT284, be aware that if you don’t already have a healthy grasp of JavaScript, coding for streams, or both, the TMA could take a considerable amount of time. (The module team estimates the time required at 10 hours. That’s probably close to how long I took, but I may have just been lucky.)

How did I do? On the coding front, I ran into two stumbling blocks. The first was due to my confusion over the difference in JavaScript between using a function as an argument, and using a variable which references that function. (It took me about an hour of research later on to realise how I’d fixed the problem and why it was necessary, which led to me tidying up the code.) The second was because I had read through a practical activity in the materials rather than running through it to save time, so I was leaving out a step in the TMA. So I think I did alright on the practical portion of it.

The report section is much weaker than my normal efforts, and it’s mostly because I couldn’t really force myself to care. This TMA is worth 34% of my OCAS, and the other 66% currently has full marks. So long as I get a mark of 55, my OCAS will round up to 85 or higher, and that portion of my result will be a distinction. Assuming my coding is perfect (it’s not, but I should get most marks), I only need 5 marks from the report. Heck, the diagram I put in there ought to be worth 5 marks, so I’m just not going to stress about it. I think I might get a 90 on this one.

So now I’m hastily rushing back to M269 which has its second and final TMA due in two weeks. I was a little concerned over how much work there was to do in it until I opened up my TMA template for M269, and saw that I’d gotten a decent start on it all the way back before Christmas, when my best self was still diligently ignoring how tough three modules were next to full time employment and full time parenting. It’s rough, but I might pull through it after all.