DD307 TMA04 – the project report starts to take shape

So (as I appear to start every question I asked of my participants during the group discussion), it’s been a pretty productive Saturday writing up my project report. I think I’m around halfway there, but unsurprisingly I have too many words in my background and research question section and too few in the methods section. I’m not sure whether the section counts given the project booklet are hard limits, or if the only hard limit is the 4,000 word limit for the assignment. If anyone can point me at the answer it would be useful, though I think it seems wise to stick to both.

My reward for a day’s satisfyingly productive session was a large glass of red wine, accompanied by completing a theme upgrade on my blog to a new revision (if it’s gone well you shouldn’t really be noticing much of a difference, if any). I’m now on my second glass, typing this and desperately trying to find anything decent to watch on the myriad of Freeview channels on the box. I’m sure telly was better when there were only five available. Come to think of it, it was better when there were only four!

Tomorrow I’d like to think that I’ll have something approaching a complete first draft which I can finalise over the next week or so. I also need to go back to complete TMA03 for SD226 soon too, before I forget it all and end up starting again.

Carrie (you know, the OU platform student blogger amongst her many other talents) tweeted at me earlier on in the week that doing a level 3 60 pointer alongside a level 2 30 pointer must be tough. She’s not wrong – it is! But I’m determined to make it to the end of the year and get my second degree. Somehow, it means so much more doing it this way, second time around, than getting the degree I’ve built my life on over the last 25 years. My OU psychology degree may not lead to a change in career, but it has already led to a change in me and how I see the world.

On the evening before Father’s day, I find myself wondering how my Dad would have reacted to what I’ve managed to achieve on this qualification if he were still alive. It would probably be my sheer bloody-mindedness in pursuing the goal that would have impressed him most. I’m not certain that the subject matter would have necessarily been to his taste. He was too much of a practical man to care very much about the philosophical debates that rage amongst psychologists over the nature of self and society. But I hope he’d be proud of me.

And on that note, before the wine starts to speak more loudly than me, I’ll stop writing. I need to save my words for finishing off my report!