Summer is almost over

I know this because my OU parcel arrived recently. I've already been getting things ready for next year and I want to start reading and to get ahead, but I don't want to eat into the free time I have left before year three! I've ordered a Rocketbook which should come at the end of this week, so maybe I'll wait until that arrives.

For those who don't know what a Rocketbook is, it's an erasable notebook, so I'm going paperless! It's a cleverly designed notebook that you scan with your phone and it gets saved to OneNote. Then you simply wipe the pages clean and start again. I'm excited to give it ago, I hope it's good. It's coming all the way from America! I also ordered a hard drive to back up my laptop. 

As usual, looking through things has made me feel quite intimidated about what's to come. Not only does this module (DE200) have an exam, which I hate, it builds on DE100 which wasn't my favourite module and I have to get to grips with a new program called SPSS. I've already done an OpenLearn course on it and it's still not that simple, but hopefully it makes more sense as I work through the module. There's also double the amount of assignments compared to my last modules which were 30 credits and they're not even in any logical order!

The only comfort though is the fact that it builds on prior knowledge so at least I know something. The OU have a page for getting ahead and quizzes to determine what you need to remind yourself of before the module begins which is helpful (when it opens though). I've had a look through my notes and tried to jog my memory of what I learned. It feels like such a long time ago when I did DE100! I think I read somewhere that we'll be doing our own project again this year, but it will be qualitative, using thematic analysis. I get the gist of thematic analysis but it seems very broad and quite complicated. I remember reading about it and you can even see in my notes that I didn't give that chapter much thought or effort. Now I'm going to have to pay more attention to it.

The good thing is that the topics covered by DE200 from what I've seen so far look really interesting and ask really interesting questions, like why we help one another, why we form relationships etc.

Let's see what happens...