Hoo-boy. Working ahead of the module schedule. That’s great, isn’t it?
On one hand, it’s awesome. I submitted TMA03 on 12 December, and couldn’t begin any other study, because block 3 didn’t open until I was on an extended trip in America. There was snow on Christmas morning, and enough food to reassert my waistline as an American. I had over a month off with no studying to do, and I didn’t have a single worry in the back of my mind on holiday. And then I was able to pick it back up right on schedule with the other students doing TU100.
On the other hand … Wow. I’m finding it so hard to get traction on my studies that I think I might still be snow driving.
First, my tutor dropped a hint that she thought that one of the TMA questions was asking for basically paragraphs of information, when I had interpreted it as a short-form answer, as it had no word count and could easily be answered in a single sentence. So it took me until the last day to find the motivation to change my answer and re-submit. The entire section is only worth 6 marks out of 100, so having a correct answer be too short wouldn’t have impacted my score a great deal, but that’s exactly the kind of thinking that has been killing my motivation.
Aside from motivation, the other big problem is sleep. I’m still dealing with jet lag, and my youngest hit toddlerhood the very day we got back, and he’s decided that bedtimes are utter BS. He hates them more than I hate ticky-box evaluation. The bedtime is a parenting issue, which is the subject of another blog entirely, and one I’ve handled well before. But for this week …
It means that just four days in, I’ve fallen behind two days. It’s going to be an uphill struggle. Going to be hard to get it in gear. Gotta put the br– Okay, sorry about the car analogies. My car also gave up the ghost and I had to get a new one. Like I said, rough week.
But next Tuesday I’ll have TMA03 back, I should be through at least one and a half parts of block 3, and should even be halfway done with TMA04. Here’s to wishful thinking, and hoping my study prep has grounded me well for time management when it counts.
Edit 2017/1/27: TMA03 results in. Very happy with my 93 on this one, but I really don’t know where the marks came off, as my tutor didn’t really state it. There was a definition missing from one question which I can agree with, and a formatting issue in another location which I do agree with, but was made because the tutor warned against using fancy formatting. Still, can’t argue much with the score. My OCAS for the module so far is 46, and I need a 40 to pass, so I could quit handing in TMAs and doing iCMAs and still pass the OCAS portion of the module.