That was quick!

Well the “ten working days” flew by pretty quick! I’ve already had a reply from the OU in reponse to my preferred modules…

Dear Damien

Thank you for your email.

I have looked at the plan you have proposed to complete your studies within four years and yes this would be allowed. However, whilst I understand your desire to complete your degree as soon as possible the classification of your degree is more important to employers/other providers than the amount of time it has taken you.

I am not sure what you intend using your degree for but if you want to pursue a career in Psychology then you will need to concentrate on getting a 2:1 or above, careers in psychology are very competitive.

You may find the following websites helpful

http://www.prospects.ac.uk/options_psychology.htm
http://www.bps.org.uk/

Best wishes

Carole Green

Psychology and Counselling Student Support Team

So that’s me decided then. I also appreciate the extra advice Carole offered, and hopefully it will be of use to some of you. As I say, I intend on getting a 1:1 and nothing is going to interfere with that (I hope!)

My Pathway

Since enrolling with the OU, I have been pondering over what path I will take with regards to my module choices over the next four years. When it boils down to it, I have rather a limited choice actually. Each level has a compulsory module, so that’s half of the degree taken care of before I even start.

Level 1, only had 2 choices: Introduction to Social Sciences or Introduction to Childhood Studies and Child Psychology. As previously discussed, I chose the former.

Level 2 has more choices, four in fact. Right off the bat, I’ll chuck the Sports Psychology module in the bin. I’m not a sporty type of person so I doubt I would engage with it. The Counselling module I’m not really all that interested in either. This is mostly because I don’t have any intention of following a career path that would involve counselling in any way shape or form. Psychology of Childhood and Youth is my fallback option for Level 2 as out of the 3 childhood modules available across the degree, this one sounds the most appealing to me. My first choice (more on this further in this post) will be the new for October 2015, Living Psychology: From Every Day to the Extraordinary. The blurb for this module really caught my eye:

Using real-world situations, this module introduces you to psychological issues, theories, approaches and methods as they arise from, and can be applied to, the everyday and not-so-everyday lives of people. The real-world situations you will explore vary from the truly ‘everyday’ (e.g. interacting with the world around us), through to less ‘everyday’ examples (e.g. developments in artificial intelligence), and on to more ‘extraordinary’ aspects of life (e.g. the consequences of extreme life experiences). In exploring these issues, you’ll cover a broad range of psychological concepts, finding out how psychological knowledge is both created and used in the real world.

I think there is enough in this module to really sink my teeth into it and engage with the subject matter in a meaningful way.

Level 3 again I can immediately dismiss the sports module. The childhood psychology module doesn’t sounds as interesting as the Level 2 module. That leaves two: Forensic Psychology or a new for Oct 2016 Social Psychology (unfortunately there is no description for this module yet). The Forensic degree, as it stands, doesn’t fit in with my timetable of 4 years as it doesn’t start until 2017, and to take this module, as much as I would like to, would either mean doing the degree over 5 years, or doing Investigating Psychology 2 & 3 at the same time. As one builds on the other I don’t think that’ such a good idea, even if it were permissible by the OU. So, Social Psychology it is.

Of course, this may all change as we go through, but I think it is good to have a plan to start with. The OU may even poo-poo my plan if certain modules have to be done in a specific order. I have emailed them with my outline to see if I can take the modules I want, when I want to take them. I’ll have a reply back in about 10 working days.

Now, is there any chance the next month can fly by so I can get started with my first module?

Aiming for the top

Ok, so it is a little early to be thinking about degree classification before I’ve even received my first set of course materials, but it’s pouring it down with rain (as expected for a British Bank Holiday Monday) and I have little better to do this morning.

Obviously, if I am going to be paying best part of £16,000 for the entire course I want to end up with nothing less than a First, but what do I need to do to achieve that? Looking on the OU website, there is a guide on how to work out how they score your modules to work out your classification. You can find that here. Unfortunately, it isn’t the easiest of documents to understand, and you could be forgiven for coming away after reading it more confused than when you started.

It took me a while to work through it, but I have come up with a simpler way of explaining it…

Your degree classification is based on your Level 2 and Level 3 modules adding up to 240 points. Typically this will be two 60 point modules at level 2 and two at level 3. If for some reason you have done more than 2 modules at a given level, only your top  scoring modules at that level (up to 120 points) will count.

Level 3 modules are scored at double. So that’s 120 points for each Level 3 module and 60 points for each Level 2. Assuming you did two level 2’s and two Level 3’s, you now have a base score of 360 points.

Are you still with me so far?

Now, for each module, multiply the number of points by your Pass Grade (1, 2, 3 or 4). Add them all together and you’ll end up with a score of between 360  and 1440. Now see where that score falls in the following ranges:

First class 630 or less
Upper second class 631 to 900
Lower second class 901 to 1170
Third class 1171 to 1440

Not so fast though!

This score then needs to be qualified against your best Level 3 module (60 points). Your best score in this module has to be equal to or better than the class suggested by your score. So basically you need to get a Distinction in at least one Level 3 module to get a First. If your best Level 3 was a Pass 2, you can’t get more than a 2:1 even if your score is less than 630.

Hopefully, that explains it all a little better than they have managed to do, but if not then don’t panic. Someone even cleverer than me has done an online calculator.

Plagiarism – An Early Warning

If anyone reading this has done any form of study before (should be most of you then), no doubt you will have been told how serious plagiarism is. One should not copy another’s work and attempt to pass it off as one’s own. The consequences of doing so can end up having you failing an assignment, or worse still, kicked off the course entirely. The thing with cheating is, somehow, someway, you stand a very high chance of being found out. So it’s best not to do it.

When I started this blog, I had a look around the internet to see if there were any other bloggers doing a similar thing to me. Last weekend, I found psychdblog.wordpress.com by a guy from Liverpool who has spent this year doing the DD101 course. It’s a good read and a nice insight into the course, and OU life.

Yesterday, I came across another blog theintermittentstudent.blogspot.co.uk by an indeterminate someone who is much further into his OU career. He also did DD101 back in 2011. This blog is also a very nice insight and I spent a good couple of hours pouring through all the posts. But then I noticed something odd. This blog just seemed all too familiar in some way. And then a lightbulb turned on inside my head.

I went back to the first blog and did a comparison. The guy from Liverpool has on some (but not all) posts lifted thoughts and opinions (in 2014) directly from the second blog (written in 2011) and passed them off as his own.

I have no idea why Liverpool man would want to do that in a blog. It achieves nothing, especially as the posts are merely a personal evaluation of that particular week’s course content.

Have a look and see for yourself. Compare this entry with this entry.

It’s all very odd if you ask me, but it does illustrate my original point in this post- if you plagiarise, someone somewhere will find out. So don’t do it.

Starting at the beginning

Just a quick note to start with- I’ve backdated some of these posts to roughly when they happened. I started this blog on 16th August 2014, but there’s a few bits I want to write about that have happened already. So here we go…

April 2014. I’ve been single now for nearly 2 months and for the most part I am pretty happy about it. Over the last 12 years I’ve spent most of my life with someone. It’s a way of life I have gotten used to, but now I am on my own again, I am finding it quite liberating not having someone else to consider with everything I do. My job is going well, I am soon to start a new role as an Assistant Project Manager in the NHS.

Since quitting college back in 1995, I have spent most of my career in retail, moving from one job to another as life permitted, never spending more than a couple of years in one job. In 2010 I finally had my fill of arsehole customers and Head Offices screaming at us to wring every last penny would could from everyone who walked into the shop. I needed a change of direction. I ended up taking a part-time job in the Pathology lab at my local hospital and I loved it immediately! Less than a year later I won a promotion to the Blood Transfusion lab as a Senior Assistant Healthcare Scientist and spent 3 happy years there.

There was often plenty of talk about being funded for a degree in Biomedical Sciences, something I was very keen on, but due to budget restraints as a result of the economic downturn, this was never to be. If I wanted a degree, I had to fund it myself. Eventually, my new role came along, which would take me out of the lab environment, and potentially along a different path.

This gave me something to think about. I am now in a position where I can forge a career in the NHS and stay within the Pathology Department (now called the Department of Laboratory Medicine), but with the new job, I began to question whether doing a degree in Biomedical Sciences, and finding a university that offered a distance learning course, was actually the right choice.

I think I would make a good Biomedical Scientist. I enjoy the environment, but I wondered that, if after 4 years already in the lab, plus a further 4 during the length of a degree (minimum), would I be longing for a change of direction again after best part of a decade? Plus, now I am leaving the lab and turning to a world of project management, would a degree in Biomedical Science prove restrictive at the end of it?

So I thought long and hard about it. In the end, I decided to enroll on a degree in Psychology with the Open University starting in October. Why? Well I already have a year’s worth of Psychology education through the ACCESS course I did back in 2002-03 and I thoroughly enjoyed it (not to mention I got the best marks in Psychology out of the three subjects I took), and also I think that as Psychology is such a wide-ranging subject, it will give me the most flexibility when it comes to furthering my career later down the line.

I won’t now become a Biomedical Scientist, but that’s ok. There are many other options available to me, still within Laboratory Medicine (or not, who knows!?), some of which I may not have even imagined yet.

So here I go, I have registered with the OU and have elected to study Psychology. Now, which module do I choose?