My four years of Open University studies has come to an end. It ended with such an anti-climax. I hadn’t foreseen that I would not be melancholy about my study days being over. I thought that I would desire continuing on. But this final module (AKA academic year) has been such a hurdle I am feeling more relief than anything at the moment.
I knew that English Literature was never going to be an easy subject for me to tackle. Writing the Simple Minds book caused a real problem to my studies and so I felt the best thing to do at the end of 2024 was to defer study and concentrate on getting the book completed. I had already moved the deadline along twice and I couldn’t afford to keep doing that. I also thought – naively – that a break from studies might do me good.
I don’t think it turned out that way in hindsight, but that’s the thing with hindsight, isn’t it?
The first sign that things were maybe not going to go as well as I had hoped was achieving a lower mark with my first assignment than I had in 2024. It wasn’t SIGNIFICANTLY lower, but it was lower. Then our tutor took ill and we were tutored by a temporary cover for a few weeks. We then learned our tutor was unable to return to take the rest of the module so we were assigned a permanent replacement. My second assignment was marked by another tutor, and the remainders by the full-time replacement. My marks fluctuated wildly. There is a 23 point difference between my highest to lowest marks. At this stage in my studies I would have expected to be much more consistent.
There was a lot of reading material and I thought I would stuggle with that. I thought I would especially struggle with the second part of the module. The module was split into two parts: Realism and The Fantastic – the latter part involved fairy tales, a Neil Gaiman graphic novel (which I refused to read or study) and was ending with Shakespeare’s The Tempest which I also never read because I decided to do my final essay on the book we’d read before that: Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. As a science fiction novel I had enjoyed reading it much more than I had anticipated.
Of the book I read in their entirety: Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, Hotel World by Ali Smith, Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by Simon Armitage, and The Dispossessed – the ones that made the biggest impression were Hotel World, Mrs Death Misses Death and The God of Small Things. So much so with the latter that I placed a hold at the library for Roy’s memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me waaaay back in March. I have only just finished listening to it this past week and I loved it. I find Arundhati Roy a very inspiring writer. I also bought myself a copy of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness which I am looking forward to reading.
As I was going along the module I was starting to fear that my enjoyment of reading might be sullied due to the way close reading analysis requires you to look at what the author is doing, explore the literary devices and techniques they are implimenting in their writing. It gets very technical and it was something that I wasn’t that good at getting a handle on. And the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms was not doing much to help me truly understand what some of the techniques were. Ask me to explain what narratology is to you and…there’s no bloody chance. Bakhtin might as well have been speaking in Russian to me for what good it was to explain it to me English!
Thankfully, I haven’t been put off from reading books but I have been somewhat put off by trying to employ close reading analysis. Yet I know that if I want to be even REMOTELY good at being a writer I need to understand what other authors are doing and how they’re doing it. I am fully aware that study isn’t meant to be easy. I did very well in all my previous modules and I LOVED the Creative Writing module but I genuinely felt defeated by this past English Literature module.
Not wanting to tempt fate but I have most likely passed the module and therefore I will have obtained my Diploma of Higher Education in English. But I end my studies not feeling that I have done as well as I would have hoped, which has given me such mixed emotions. It’s a mixture of relief and what the hell do I do now? that sits with me. The studies focused my mind, gave me a regime and a sense of purpose and now …? What will I have?
As a side note: I was meant to go to the Lemon Twigs show on Friday night at the QMU and I just didn’t have it in me. I wanted to see the D’Addario boys again but when the day was getting closer I just lost the urge to go. However, I did experience some live music this weekend. Em and I went to the City Halls last night for the grand final of the BBC Scotland Young Classical Musician of the Year and I thoroughly enjoyed it and have vowed to attend more classical music concerts.
As for gigs coming up? Well, there is nothing in the calendar until Beverley Knight at the Armadillo on 17 June but I’ll keep my eyes peeled for other things to come.
In the meantime I can enjoy reading for pleasure.
Tara!
