The Break...

Well I have enjoyed my week off, got round to doing loads of stuff that I have been wanting to do for some time.

This weeks gave me chance to think about the work we've done over the last few months. From what all my other mates at university and colleges have said, I seem to have done alot more work than they have.

Some of them haven't fully settled in yet and are still on the nice easy induction that they have for their course. Yet I have handed in an assignment that will effect my overall grade.

Looking back at the last term, it has been different from the 1st half term/semester than I've had at other universities and colleges.

Having to learn software just so we can hand an assignment in is also something I've never done before. Most submissions I've done before have just been handed in printed from a word processor such as Microsoft Word. Although I'm not complaining about this, I found PageMaker to be a good piece of software.

Getting my written work done seemed to take a lot longer than I thought it would and I put a lot of time into getting the layout, references and images right. Putting references into the PageMaker document was tedious if you wanted to add one before one that was already there, as you would need to change all the numbering all way through. It does give it that edge though when you look back through it. It makes you feel like you've handed in much more than an assignment.

Time planning is also something I've had a problem with. I find it extremely hard to plan things. For a start, I never know when I will be doing college work outside of college. The other thing is, I haven't got a clue how long certain things would take.

For example Craig mentions in his blog how it took him a lot longer than expected just to design some labels for his work. This is something I will have to improve on for the next project. Maybe I could use a different method or something?

The lectures provided by Steve and other staff such as John and Helen have always been relevant to the course, something that is not always done on other courses.

I'm glad its been a sort of 'hit-the-ground-running' instead of being gently eased in as it stops you from becoming lazy in the first part of the course.

I feel sorry for my mates for when it comes to submission time as they've been eased in that gently that it will come as a real shock to them.