It’s now the beginning of Trimester 3, 2017. I’ve successfully completed 14 units of a 24 unit course, I feel like I’m on the home stretch. If all goes well over summer I’ll have two full years under my belt and only need to complete eight units to have my full Bachelor of Arts degree. In an ideal world I’d complete the final eight units next year and after next summer I’d be done. In reality it’s not quite that easy.
The complications are that I don’t think I can do four units in a trimester, I don’t think I have that kind of time or mental or physical energy. It means that one of the units which is only offered in Trimester 1 might have to wait until 2019. The other complication is that one of the units I’ve signed up for over summer looks to be above my skill set.
Web Design and Interactivity looked good at first glance. You don’t get much information to make a decision until you’re given access to all the resources. I had a glance at some of the resources last night and I’m concerned I might have to do something people call ‘drawing’. It’s not one of my skill sets, I struggle to make stick figures look like stick figures. I have concerns that I’m going to fail this unit the moment they see my drawing. It’s an expensive exercise at roughly $2,700 for a unit, I’ll be talking to my tutor next week to see what the unit really holds and if there’s a chance I can actually pass it. If not, I will drop it and only do one unit over summer.
This means there’s a distinct chance I won’t be able to do eight units next year. And it might mean I’ll have two units to complete in 2019. One will be a mandatory unit and the other an elective.
If I continue with this subject then November and December will be hell on wheels. There’s a chance I might have to drop something and that might be my blog. This Web Design subject is three months work and everything has to be completed before Christmas. Three months work in less than two months. Yikes!
The other subject I’m doing over summer is an interesting one. I’m struggling to get my head around the concepts. And then I said something stupid in class which I’m going to have to retract or just ignore. What I said is that there haven’t been many books published dealing with environmental matters before five years ago. I’m wrong, there’s plenty but it seems I just hadn’t read any of them.
The subject is Literary Ecologies. There’s so much reading. Nine books and a movie or telemovie, plus so many extra readings. Many of these critical readings are challenging, I ploughed my way through the first one and wasn’t any the wiser afterwards. It was dense and contained many new concepts, I’ve printed four pages as it contains a glossary and I know I’m going to need to refer to it a lot. For my class on Tuesday I need to view the electure, read two books, read seven of these critical readings and email my tutor with a couple of discussion points. I’ve viewed the electure, read one book and I’m halfway through one of the readings. My thoughts are coming clear and it seems I’ll actually have some discussion points to submit to my tutor.
Reading through my writing here I notice I’ve used the words ‘unit’ and ‘subject’ interchangeably. It can be a little confusing. Most of my subjects are only worth one unit so using the terms interchangeably doesn’t really matter. The difference is next year. I have two subjects next year which are both worth two units. I’m scheduled to do two subjects in Trimester 1 but one of those is worth two units so at the end of the Trimester it will show I’ve completed three units despite having only studied two subjects. And the same will happen in Trimester 2, two subjects worth three units between them. The work for a two unit subject is roughly double that one a one unit subject so it makes sense. It also means I’ll really be able to get my teeth into something, it should be covered in more depth than a one unit subject.
Having successfully got my word count for this article over 666 I’m going to stop. For some reason I didn’t like stopping at 666, it felt strange.