I’ve started work on the second batch of assignments. They’re getting a week each, starting with Sociology. At this point, the optimal arrangement seems to be to use three evenings a week, plus about 4-5 hours one day of the weekend, for study. That can be new material, or assignment work, although I suspect that the assignment work may run… (more…)
The second-to-last unit of the available history units (more out soon, we’re assured) was concerned with the French Wars of Religion, and the Thirty Years War. We’d been warned about the Thirty Years War, and the incomprehensibility thereof, but in the event, I found it easy enough to get a grip on. I may criticise Merriman on other fronts, but… (more…)
For the last three weeks, I’ve been working on assignments. The three due dates were neatly staggered, one a week, with the final one next Monday. They’ve all been delivered on time; I’ve been happy with the content where it’s possible to be happy with it, and pretty sure it’s correct where that’s an issue – mostly in the two… (more…)
I am having some disagreements with the structure of my history course. These come down, in essence, to the choice of textbooks. Our core text, pretty much, is John Merriman’s History of Modern Europe Vol 1. We also have a secondary text, a collection of essays on the same era edited by Beat Kümin, entitled The European World 1500-1800. The thing… (more…)
The first tutorials of the year, in History and Sociology, were on last Saturday. Both were good, in a number of ways. For History, there was a set of introductions from the 20 or so people present, a general overview of the course contents, some recommendations about the main textbooks, and some supplementary ones, and then a run through the… (more…)
There’s a very nice short piece by Sarah Crown in yesterday’s Guardian about a recent comment from China Miéville on the notions of estrangement and recognition in literature. Miéville is one of my great literary heroes, and in this he seems to have turned an old argument – genre vs. mainstream – into something much more meaningful in terms of… (more…)
I sat down last week and worked out a study schedule. Divided up the number of modules across the weeks, took account of Gaelcon, when no study will be done, and Yule, and the trip to Norway early next year. I puzzled over why the courses have widely varying numbers of units – 18 in one, up to 36 in… (more…)
The Welcome day for the Oscail programme was on Saturday. It was for everyone on any Oscail course, so we had BA Humanities, BA English & History, an IT course of some kind, and post-grads all in one place to begin. They then split off the post-grads, and then later on divided out the BA and IT people, all of… (more…)
The initial materials for SOC1 and HIS1 arrived today, one binder each in comedy-style huge boxes. Between those and the sociology books I borrowed from the library, I should have plenty of reading for the immediate future. I also did the necessary stationery shopping earlier this week, which mostly consisted of acquiring some A4 refill pads in a paper style… (more…)
Insomnia
I’m sitting down to write this post at five minutes to three on Sunday night. Tomorrow is a bank holiday, and the only appointment I have is to go and look at a potential new allotment in the afternoon, so I’m not worried about sleeping. Not that I’m ordinarily worried about sleeping – I only get insomnia when I’m well… (more…)