It’s that time of the year again. Twitter is full of people posting images of all their books for new OU modules with excitement ahead of the October starts. I was no exception with M208 and DB123 both on the cards for this year.
This year means the start of level 2 modules with M208 Pure Mathematics, which is a 60 point module (the equivalent of a half a normal university year) but also the 30 point DB123 Personal Finance as I had to complete level 1 in parallel if I was to start level 2 this year1. So, in addition to a full time job at a start up company2 I am also doing the equivalent of 3/4 full time on a university course.
I’m a little nervous about this workload. While I’ve got distinctions in the three modules I’ve done so far, it’s not been due to hard work on my part 3. M208 is a step up as you’d expect for a level 2 module and this is also the first module where my result will actually count for the final degree classification. The pace is high and I don’t think I’m going to get away with what I did for MS221. I also have an extra module to do alongside and one that I’m not really interested in just to make up the points because I skipped the “easy start” pathway for maths. I think this is where I’m going to struggle with motivation.
I’ve had the books for M208 for a week now, and have been studying as part of my commute. However, with the general crush of people on both the train and tube, I’ve not managed as much as I was hoping. The pace of M208 requires working through the books at the rate of one a week, and even though I’ve started 3 weeks early, I’ve managed about half that. This does not bode well for my plan to get and stay ahead on M208 so I could pick up DB123 in parallel without much impact.
Still, it’s early days. I only have a clash in the first tutorials for both modules and the TMAs are pretty well spaced out. But I do know I’ll have to keep the pace so I don’t fall behind as there’s no room to catch up… and if you see someone on the train with OU books, please try to give them a bit of space 🙂
- I’m still grumpy about this – I wanted to use my spare 30 points for the really interesting level 3 modules but since I started, this is no longer possible ↩
- Which as you can imagine is not something that can be contained to normal working hours… ↩
- Indeed, I’ve been doing probably slightly less than the bare minimum and getting away with it only because this is all stuff I’ve covered before. M208 isn’t going to be as easy I know… ↩