h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think it's time to get back to the studies.

Some time ago, life got a bit crazy, so I put them on pause for a little while, just until I got things sorted. Well, one week turned to another, and another, and another - and now I check the records and find out that the last course I completed, ignoring the two I broke off, was eight bloody years ago.

How did that happen?

Anyway, I've been starting to get antsy and restless about not being engaged in studying anything. Time to get back to it, before eight years becomes eighteen.

There are still details to iron out before I can restart, but the wheels are in motion.

There's a moral in there: never 'temporarily' stop something, or it tends to become long term. Just push through the tough bit and keep your momentum. It's easier in the long run.

a few times I've stopped going to martial arts for a week or two to rest... and six months to a year later I drag myself back and swear I'll not take time off like that again

what are you studying, KB?
lucky for me I have to complete one course every year and finish my degree by december 2017 to keep the old (pre-hike) fees. Otherwise I'd be tempted to stop and never start again sometimes. I get a four month summer break each year and even though I'm studying for fun, I really love it.

I still don't know what I'll be studying...but I hope to start in February.

I'm still undecided between (let's call it broadly) environmental science and history.

I'd like to get a degree with *some* element of vocational use, and I'd like to get more into conservation, but I'm equally pulled by history.

I was talking to my friend B. (who knows her way round academia more than enough). And I mentioned that I was simultaneously reading a book about Culloden, one about the highland clearances, one about Stalinist Russia and one about Pol Pot & Kampuchea.

"Is it even up for discussion?" she said, "of *course* you should be studying history!"

It was just an off-the-cuff comment rather than serious advice, but it did make me think that she's probably got a point, y'know.

on the other hand, since you already read widely around the subject of history, why not study something more like environmental science?

Where will you be studying? (have you thought about the OU? not sure it's an option for you, but one of our famous researchers seems to be having a whale of a time doing geology, which might be something up your street? or an open degree where you could do history AND something environmental?


(i've just started my philosophy course and am at the "i totally adore it and the OU stage" this will change...)

That's the other point of course. History's easier to just teach yourself by reading a book than lots of other things are.

Well we'll see. If I'm starting in February it gives me a couple of months to mull it over.

>> History's easier to just teach yourself by reading a book than lots of other things are. <<

Depending on the text books available.

N.B. I'm in Texas.

oh yes - for you that would be more like fantasy then?

Um... not fantasy... how do they classify Ayn Rand?

As one of the most audacious confidence tricksters of the 20th Century, if they've any sense.

This looks like a potentially interesting next step... http://css2.open.ac.uk/outis/descs/mc_courses/U116.htm (link mightn't work )

this is what I've just started...

http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/modules/a222

That was one on my short(?!)list, too. How are you liking it?

it only started last Saturday although I've done the first two week's worth of work since I've had the books quite a while.

I'm liking it so far, but it is very different to my last one
http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/modules/dd209

A bit of variety is no bad thing!

I'm within a whisker of plumping for the history route now.

And a very appealing plan has occurred to me, which I can only enact if I take the history route, regarding work-y shtuff.

is it a cunning plan?

It is a plan so cunning you could stick whiskers on it and call it Lassie!

Right. Well, that great plan I mentioned came to nothing today, so I'll have to look at other avenues.

On top of that I'm in a bit of a bureaucratic wrangle with uni admin folks.

But we'll get there. (It's starting to piss me off. There's been to much faffing about in various quarters for my liking. Nobody seems very good at just Getting Shit Done these days!)

Half a league, half a league, half a league onwards - I'm a step further on now. I got a response back today which, well, amounted to passing the buck on to the next link in the bureaucratic chain. But it's a step further on.

(Sometimes I wonder how normal people - ones who *aren't* stubborn, obstinate shites - cope with modern life.)