Arnold

This year was always shaping up to be a rather full one from the start but it turned out to be even more hectic for longer than expected.

Kicking off the year was the web design course which turned out to be just what I wanted. It was one of those courses where the course is what you make of it and I made a lot along the way. Thanks to it, the accommodation sites have had a major facelift and that in turn has enabled me to run up a trial Android version of them too.

The final part of that course was a work placement which was in Wasp Solutions, a fantastic place to work and almost the perfect job for me. Unfortunately in many ways, the main job offer came along just a week into that which everyone but me thought was fantastic. With that offer in the bag, I had to fit in a trip to France to pick up all our stuff, something that we’ve been meaning to do for a year or two now but which we didn’t get around to until this March.

The “new” job is basically the same job that I was doing eight years ago, but with a different view out the window. As with this type of job, it’s a fairly slow start and it’s some months into it before things start to get really busy.

Alongside the work, I was doing the level 2 chemistry course with the OU from last November, adding their autism course for a few months and then adding signals & perception to that as from February. Course-wise things got really hectic in June with the chemistry exam for the first two weeks and the pre-course work for the two summer schools for the last two weeks. Then it was off to Nottingham and York for the residentials themselves in July with the final week going in doing the assignment for the perception course. August disappeared in doing the assignments for the two summer schools and in September it was catch-up time for perceptions before the October exam. Funnily enough, right now, I’m just about exactly on schedule with the perceptions course despite everything.

Adding on complications to that lot was the saga of Mum’s dentures which has dragged on since May and she still doesn’t have them. Finally, Wendy broke her foot which in turn used up all my holiday time in picking the kids up from school.

In theory, the end of the year should see a slow down in all sectors but no doubt other things will come along to fill the gaps and then some. Still, as of now, there’s just a level three chemistry course starting at the end of October and the final few appointments to get Mum’s dentures sorted out which is a lot less than I started the year with.

Copyright © 2011-2013 by Arnold Stewart. All rights reserved.

For once that’s easy to answer: it was eaten up by the S204 biology course which took loads more time than expected. OK, everyone said that it took a lot of time, but they say that about lots of courses and usually I end up doing it in no more than half the recommended time. This time though it was very much a case of doing as much as one could do whilst still omitting vast tracts of the course material.

Study guides? Who could read them all when they ran to 250 pages? I omitted the final one completely. DVD material? Who could possibly do all that was available? I only found about a seventh book lurking in one of the DVDs when I came to the final TMA. I was planning on saving the self-assessment questions up until revision time but ended up never fitting them in at all.

It’s now just over a month since the final exam and it’s only been in the last week that I feel that I’m getting over it. The revision workload was truly massive for S204 with the revision notes alone running to 80 pages, intended to summarise the 250 pages of course guides (themselves containing a fair chunk of information rather than just being a guide into everything else), the 2000 pages of course texts and the material in the DVDs.

Was it worth it? Well, I learned a lot of stuff that I never knew about before so it was very much a learning experience. Useful things too with rarely a day going by without some genuinely fascinating information so I know things ranging from why bananas go off in the fridge to why the trees change their visible colours in the Autumn. Strangely, although I went into the course intending to concentrate on animals and microbes, I found that the plant material was equally if not more fascinating than that for the animals.

Certainly a comprehensive course but one that attempted to pack just too much into the time available. If it had been run over 12 months rather than 9 it would have still been hard going but at least it would have been possible to cover the material on offer rather than having to omit substantial chunks of it.

That’s not to say that S204 was the only thing that happened during the year of course. Mum moving into a residential home made for a substantial change to our own lives and is continuing to do so.

Course-wise I feel that I’m winding down towards the end of the degree although there’s another three years to go. At the moment I’m in the midst of the chemistry counterpart to S204 which, frankly, seems like a doddle in comparison. Alongside that I’m getting back into psychology with the autism course and in the new year the signals & perception course. It looks like I’ll be overlaying the diabetes course as well alongside the two summer schools so it will be quite a full start to the year albeit with a bit of a slowing of the pace after the summer.

Career-wise, I should be starting in the new job early in 2012. The lead-in admin for that is taking ages: the interview was in May, I accepted the offer made towards the end of June and it’s basically waiting now. During the waiting time it looks like I’ll be able to fit in a 3 month web design course which is handy although in some ways a short pre-job holiday would have been nice too.

 

Copyright © 2011-2013 by Arnold Stewart. All rights reserved.

The latter half of January turned out to be a fairly busy period and, as usual, some things slipped behind a bit.

Seeming to have slipped but actually on track is the new heating system and bathroom. Essentially January/February are non-runners for getting work like that done due to the weather that you generally get round here so although it seems to have slipped, in reality March/April is a more realistic time to do it.

On track, if barely, are the courses I’m doing at the moment. The latest archaeology assignment was another last minute submission mainly as it proved to be a surprisingly heavy workload for it due to the research required. It was good practice for the final one though as that’s a small research project. Reading on the biology is ahead of schedule but I need to get the assignment done this week and then it’s on to the experimental work the following week alongside of which the reading needs done.

The computing course got off to a bad start with a lot of messing around with CafeScribe which is, by all accounts, rubbish. Surprisingly though I had it running a week or so ahead of schedule and, even more surprisingly, I was able to print the entire course book to PDF so it’s now on my reader.

On other fronts, our court case is scheduled for April but there’s a review in March as the other side don’t seem to have their act together yet. In the midst of that we’ve a tribunal case this month on an unrelated matter.

Finally, no word on the sale but then I wasn’t expecting to hear anything for a week or two.

Copyright © 2011-2013 by Arnold Stewart. All rights reserved.

Last year nothing seemed to go right and it was just typical that I finished the year suffering from swine flu, Mum in hospital and a truly naff Christmas dinner experience in one of the local restaurants.

On the other hand, 2011 does appear to be looking somewhat better beginning with much better prospects of getting the place in France sold. Not 100% definite as yet but definitely looking good at the moment. If that does come to pass it’ll sort out a whole bunch of other aspects of our lives at a stroke.

Coming up soon is my first proper IT course in getting on for 10 years. That should substantially improve my chances of getting a job when the economy does get its act together. Moreover, it will get me back into the way of working in a proper job again which I imagine will likely be a bit of a jolt to the system initially.

Wendy is becoming more and more recognised as living in the UK. Coming in the next month or so is the social security tribunal that should accept her as living here for social security purposes and, all being well, prompt the payment of several thousand pounds of unpaid benefits that she’s entitled to. That seems to be the final recognition required as she’s already here for the Inland Revenue, the health department, education department and, most recently, the Open University.

Finally, there’s the upcoming court case following my action to halt a bully last June. I can’t comment further on that for legal reasons (you’re not supposed to comment on upcoming cases). At the moment it sounds like it could drag on for several months basically because it seems like at every point an adjournment is required to ask for further information from witnesses or whatever.

Copyright © 2011-2013 by Arnold Stewart. All rights reserved.