Ageism

The old are being blamed for leaving the EU, based mainly on pre-election data.

Now, as you might well know, statistics are really easy to present in a misleading fashion. For example:

5% of people do not own a television
vs
95% of people STARE AT THE ELECTRONIC BOX IN THE CORNER NIGHT AFTER NIGHT
The statistic is the same. The context makes the difference.

So...this chart:

Firstly, the poll asked less than 1700 people. The electorate was 46.5 million people. The actual number of voters was around 33 million. 1700 people is literally nothing. 0.003% to be precise. I don't know enough about statistics to know what size of survey you would need to take for it to be statistically relevant, but I am guessing it is significantly more than 0.003%.

Second, you have to be a member of yougov to take part in their polls. Are you a member of yougov? Anyone you know? I was, but they pay fuck all for participation, so I left.

Thirdly, we are not told how many people in each age group were polled. The cohorts are unfairly sized: (6 year cohort, a 24 year cohort, a 14 year cohort and then a 25+ year cohort). They've basically taken nearly 20% of the population, asked 0.003% of them what they think of something and decided THEY ALL THINK THE SAME.

As for how many years they have had to live with decision! CHRIST! Why not just have a mass cull right now, since they'll all be dead soon anyway!

And most importantly, it was a secret ballot. We don't know WHO voted what. For all you know, I actually voted leave and am getting strange pleasure from writing pro-remain blogs (I'm not). What we do know is that over half of those who showed up to vote voted to leave, and not all of those were racist old women.

Ah, the many tales of racist old women on twitter, exhorting the line for the polls to vote to leave to 'send the buggers back'. My husband actually ended up talking to just such a racist old lady at the polls, so they definitely exist. But remember something important before casting off the entirety of the old as useless...

If anyone should have a right to vote, it's people who (just) lived through World War 2 and rationing. Nobody has earned their civic rights quite like them. The same people who voted for the only socialist government we've ever had following World War 2 also voted for us to remain in what would become the EU in 1975, by an overwhelming 67% to 33%.

I cannot abide this idea of baby boomers stealing all the wealth and leaving the young crumbs and arseholes. How many old people die alone in a freezing house every year because they can't afford to put the heating on? The reason the young are fucked is primarily because of the 2009 recession, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. But that's too difficult to comprehend. Far easier to blame the old, because they're easy targets. They're vulnerable. They're not contributing. They're death waiting to happen.

Youths, get a grip on yourselves. One day, you too will be old and your children will pay not one bit of attention to anything you say and call you a dinosaur. One day, you will talk about this referendum and they will yawn and say how everything's different now, LIKE YOU DON'T KNOW BECAUSE YOU ACTUALLY WATCHED IT HAPPEN. One day, you will exercise your right to vote, and people will blame you for the result because you're a shapeless grey mass of demographic with no perceived individuality. And you will be pissed off about it.

Revision

I hate revising. I hate it so much that the only way I can do it is to approach it systematically. I generally do well in exams, though whether this is because I work better under pressure or because my revision method is foolproof or just luck, I know not.

About three weeks before the exam, I begin to panic. It doesn't help that the further into OU study you get, the less time you get between your last TMA and your exam. This year, it's three weeks. At level 2, it was around a month. At level 1, it was around six weeks. I usually have at least a week off after submitting a TMA, so it takes a bit of adjustment to get on with it. Getting on with it is the only cure for panic, I'm afraid.

First, get hold of some past papers. You will get one 'free' with your module, and you can download more from the OUSA. Now, study that paper. Not the questions; the structure. How many questions are you expected to answer? Do the questions refer to the whole module or specific blocks of study? Basically, do you have to revise everything?
I have not yet had an exam where I have had to revise everything. Now, sometimes tutors will advise you to revise everything anyway, but balls to that. Personally, I think it's better to have really in depth knowledge of a few things than a broad knowledge of everything. You might have more choice in answering questions, but you're not going to get good marks if you only skim revised. Where there's a choice, I choose to revise the blocks I liked best. If you REALLY HATED the block on law, for example, you're not going to enjoy revising it.  The chances are, you studied the blocks you enjoyed best the most thoroughly, and revision will be a refresher rather than a re-do.

So, now you have an idea of what you need to revise, and you can make a plan. How long do you have? A month? A week? Three days? Well, you must work with what you have. Divvy up what you need to revise into manageable chunks. Honestly, I cannot endorse revising until you crack up and go blank in the exam. You need to aim for a few hours a day, broken up into chunks. Currently, I'm revising for four hours a day, in half hour segments, with a big break for lunch. The very nature of OU study means you have other stuff to do, so make your revision plan realistic. If you've got children at home every day, or a full time job, or whatever other commitments, you are not going to be able to productively revise for eight hours a day.
But don't go too far the other way. Yeah, it might be fun to go and binge watch the whole of Peaky Blinders, but you're not gonna get any work done if you do. That is classic displacement activity. Recognise it. Shun it (she says, writing her second blog in two days).

Now get on with it. I don't know how you revise. Some people favour mind maps. Some people like flash cards. Some people like to tell their children all about what they're studying while the children stare blankly back. My preferred method is to summarise each unit onto one sheet of A4, then summarise those A4 sheets onto record cards, then get my husband to test me on them. I save the testing element for the last couple of days before the exam, because nothing new is going to go in at that late stage.
I also do practice papers, but rather than write out whole essays, I just write bullet point answers. If you're doing sociology, psychology or history, linking up theories across the module is usually fairly important, so try to connect up all the theories in your head. Practice papers are useful for this. If you've not done exams for ages, do a few full length answers under the time limit allotted by the exam, to get you used to writing quickly and concisely.

Don't worry too much about perfect answers. If you can clearly remember a theory, but don't know who said it, then writing "One theory suggests" is valid. It's not a TMA: you're not expected to know everything. Of course, if you DO remember, then put it in. Don't let forgetting things in revision prey on your mind - of course you don't remember everything. It's what you DO remember that's important.

Remember the person who is marking your exam needs to be able to read it. If you're very out of practice handwriting, practice. I have nerve damage in my writing wrist/hand which means I have to do physio for a good month before the exam to stop it clawing up (it does anyway).

Plan exam day. Where's your exam centre? How are you getting there? What do you need (it says in the examination arrangements booklet)? What ID are you taking with you? What snacks? I always take polos and a bottle of lemon water, because that is my Exam Survival Kit and I'm not changing it now. Make sure you give yourself time for breakfast, and aim to be at the exam centre about half an hour before kick off. At my exam centre (Peterborough), we all mill about in the café until the OU moderators come and round us up around twenty minutes before the exam. I have arrived after this round-up before, and it's totally thrown me, arriving to an empty room.

Plan a treat for after your exam. A series of books you've been dying to read for ages? A video game? The spa? Getting absolutely bungalowed? A holiday? The cinema? ALL THE FUCKING FOOD IN MARKS? Yes, you will need a treat afterwards. Eyes on the prize.

Now go and revise and stop procrastinating!

Online Only Sucks

My uni materials arrived yesterday, and the course website opened at the same time. And I am bloody annoyed to find it is another online only course. I have a rather thin textbook of theory, and that is it.

The thing that pisses me off about online-only courses is that it makes the whole process of studying so bloody convoluted. Instead of being able to pick my books up,find somewhere to settle and get on, I have to either sit upstairs on my desktop (difficult with a baby), or try and make my elderly netbook cooperate. Last year, I downloaded my module materials onto my Kindle using the service provided by OU. Except they're really not optimised for Kindle and don't make the experience any easier - I missed several key elements of the course on first read through last year because of the way the Kindle docs were set up. And switching from Kindle, to DVD, to book, to website, back to Kindle is not my favourite way of studying. My last module had an EMA at the end, so I could collate necessary material throughout the year, but I doubt my ability to revise properly from online only resources.

I can see online-only being brilliant if you are able to manage your time and study alone for a while, but being a breastfeeding mother, I will have to grab what time I can (often with the baby on my lap, like he is right now), and studying from a book would make it feel more cohesive than going back to a website.

This module is the last one of my degree, and it is SO important to me to be able to study and revise effectively that I will probably utilise the print on demand service. But that costs money. I have had my whole degree for £5, because I was the last intake that still got it free based on income, so I don't mind paying. Some people will have paid over £1000 just to do the module; to make them pay more to have a hard copy of their study materials seems grasping.

Harumph.

University Year 4: Complete

Another year of uni is over. I have time, at last, to focus on my special summer project. It's a little more intensive than the usual voluntary census transcription...

How did it go? Well...I WANTED to be pregnant this academic year, so I only have myself to blame for the difficulty of it all. I thought I knew how difficult it would be, reasoning that doing the previous three years with an autistic preschooler/child and a baby/toddler/preschooler was quite hard as well. I did not know how hard it would be. It was...fucking hard. I got pregnant pretty much the week the course started, and was plagued by anxiety, exhaustion, nausea, sciatica, pelvic pain, anaemia, ligament pains, oedema (thank you, summer) and the mental treacle of baby brain. I am never doing it again.
These are my OCAS marks. Not bad for such a crap eight months:

The EMA for K311 was a huge challenge, which I perversely rather enjoyed, but it's not exaggerating to say that module was one of the hardest things I've ever done.
I did the exam for SDK125 this morning. I couldn't start revising (well, in any meaningful way) until I'd got the EMA submitted, which gave me a little over a week. I revised like someone of brittle sanity until about 10:30 last night, when I figured if I don't know it now, I'm not gonna know it. I think I probably passed, although I probably should have checked I had a calculator that could cope with numbers like 0.4x10¹⁴. I got the exam done in 70 minutes (the hit and run method, my favourite) and escaped in a rush of joy...without my cardigan. I have to say, the OU are brilliant if you're very pregnant and doing an exam. I could have done it at home (being 36 weeks today), but instead was permitted to take a cushion in to sit on and have half an hour rest if I needed it.

I find out if I pass about a week after the baby's due. I cannot imagine I will care ALL that much by that point, but I would prefer NOT to resit anything.
I am a glutton for punishment, however, and start again in October doing my FINAL MODULE. The end is in sight. I've signed up for K319: Adulthood, Ageing and the Lifecourse, a 60 credit level 3 course. We just have to hope the baby likes sleep, and doesn't object to mummy being on the laptop for the duration of the school day.  I'm quite prepared to defer if I have to, but I do like a challenge. Masochism runs strong in my blood.

And after that? A masters, perhaps, but more on that if I ever finish this bloody BSc.