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

There was a thread started the other day that was quite interesting. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F19585?thread=5739239 It led me to look at - A592490 Which intrigued me enough to go to - http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/index.htm Hmmm, thinks I. I wonder .... So I looked at - http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/social-sciences/criminology/index.htm And this afternoon I registered for the course and wrote out a cheque for �610. Who would've thunk it? 42 years old and deciding to do a degree - for fun!

Well, you're easily influenced!

I've had a vague urge to do something like this for a while. The thread & the Entry just gave me that final nudge.

Good luck with it then!

The first SWL in the family to do a degree

Are you from a long line of SWLs then?

Hey, good luck with that, mate. It sounds like an interesting challenge.

Well, I visited an OU event at the Book Festival & had a good chat with the people there. The strange thing about the Criminology Degree is I can choose myself whether I get a BSc or a BA at the end of it. Does anyone know the pros and cons of each?

I've also decided to do some voluntary work to back up the theoretical side. I've e-mailed the Shannon Trust - a group who help prisoners with reading difficulties. I think I'll try to do a few different forms of voluntary work throughout the course (I nearly opted for Victim Support this time, but I can't spare the time during the week to attend court). Hopefully this will complement the course and also provide practical experience towards a job at the end of it.

The course starts in October. I expect I'll be spending less & less time online as a result, which is no doubt a good thing. Maybe I can kick off a few good debates with what I'll be learning though

Bud, I can only offer good wishes and piles of respect for what you undertake. I'm pretty much settled in to my 'career' as it is, and I'd have to give some serious pause and thought to tackling such an involved challenge.

But then, you are obviously younger than I ...

All I know is BSc - bachelor in science; BA - bachelor of the arts

Good luck with the course though hun!

If it's anything like the difference between my BSc and the BA I had to choose from, it is probably merely a matter of 6 courses or fewer.

BTW, I went to Sam Houston State University which is a well respected Criminal Justice school (among other things like Photography, RTF and Teaching). One thing I noticed while there was that nearly every CJ major I met was some type of criminal.

I'm not sure if that's more indicative of CJ majors in general or just the crowd I tended to hang around.

Well my mother's just out of college, so it can happen.

Have fun, and keep us posted! It certainly looks like an interesting course.

TRiG.

I got the welcome letter this morning along with an introductory booklet to the first part of the course. One of the things that concerns me is the cost of all the books - not to mention where will the time come from to read them. For my HND, a small group of us pooled books and quite often we discovered that the course-recommended books weren't always the best ones on the subject. But I've nothing to go on with the OU. The letter today advised 2 books to study before the course starts in October, so Amazon just got £25 richer, but looking into the core subject I found one book that seems to be a must-have and it cost £37 Having said that, it is proving to be utterly fascinating and I carry it in the car and read it in the 5-10 minute breaks I have through the day.

I can see I'm going to need more bookshelves

Sheesh!!

You'd never have thought how complicated it would be with the books!!
I'dve expected it to be a

When I left the military, I walked away with a tidy sum as "severance pay". A goodly chunk of that paid the tuition for Milady to go to college, and update her decades old knowledge of office practices and procedures. We too were surprised at the number of 'texts', and the new prices for many. So very few were of any use as 'used' items, because a lot of exercises and such were tear-out.

Still, as time goes on, you may find some of the later necessary texts to be available through various campus resources, in good but used condition.

Hi SWL.

Good luck with the course, I'm sure you'll enjoy it and learn a lot. I don't have any advice, except try here http://www.alibris.co.uk/ for 2nd hand books. I got loads there at uni, and they tended to be a good bit cheaper than amazon, to the point where I don't really use amazon at all now. The earlier editions will always be cheaper, but will usually have nearly all the relevant info required.

Good luck.

Hmmmm.

Starting to wonder

The first part of the course, equivalent to Year 1 at a bricks & mortar Uni is sociology. I was advised to buy a certain text, so I did and I'm getting quite frustrated. Entitled "Social Science - the Big Issues", it's written by the senior sociology lecturer at the OU. Her style is to introduce a topic then spend an inordinate amount of time using nebulous arguments and speculative figures before coming to resounding conclusions which are highlighted in a summary.

I got off to a bad start in the opening pages when she instructs the reader to stop and list 5 attributes about themself. So I mentally totted up - punctual, argumentative, etc etc - things that I think define who I am. I turned back to the text to find her saying "You should have listed things like your sex, race, ethnicity, professional status etc". Ah. Of course the rest of the chapter goes on in exhaustive detail about how sex, race etc defines identity. Well, I disagree with that. I think they're handy labels that are more often used as excuses for failure and they don't really influence a person's perception of themself. An open-minded, tolerant person is open-minded & tolerant irrespective of race, gender etc.

The whole language of the book is, for lack of a better word, windy. She labours on and on, using a page to illustrate a point that could be made in a sentence. I've taken to speed-reading it and noting the summaries. If this is sociology, it's a load of bunkum.

Comparing it with the Oxford Handbook to Criminology is like comparing Enid Blyton with Ernest Hemingway. The Criminology book is genuinely challenging in the language it uses, but it's a fascinating and illuminating read that really makes you think about ideas & concepts in a new way. It draws you in and makes you want to learn more.

I consoled myself that maybe the Sociology book is just badly written.

Today I received my first course materials and my heart sank. Part of the reason for doing this degree is to challenge myself at a higher level than I'm used to. But, the opening workbooks are pitched at a ridiculously simple level. By coincidence, my 12 year old nephew was visiting today and I showed him some of the workbook questions. He had no trouble understanding them & getting the right answers.

Am I being too harsh? Were my expectations too high? Is this BSc actually going to be worth anything?

How long is the program, in terms of months or years? If it's lengthy, maybe they are starting it off at the lowest possible level so that anyone will be able to handle it. And then progressively get into the dense and difficult matter.

And if that's the case, it doesn't say much for the standings of the author of the first text, eh?

Sounds just about right for sociology! When I had to do a sociology module at uni it was piss easy as everthing is ultimate society's fault

It does sound like the book's badly written, which doesn't surprise me for an OU book. The sociology book I bought for uni is really well written and is actually a good read. You can borrow it if you like

Thanks for the offer Fords My reading list is a bit congested just now. Maybe once the course has settled in and I have a clearer idea of the demands on my time, I might take you up on that

I'm guessing that these early parts of the course are ridiculously easy to cater for the wide variety of people who study through the OU.