Last year I decided I’ve had enough of being a Library Assistant and its time to become the BIG CHEESE LIBRARIAN!! And then have an action figure made after me…just like Nancy Pearl.
Librarian action figure with sushing motion. The Librarians at work hated it..stereotypical blah blah blah. But I just had to laugh.
Yes, I am going to University!
Seeing as I need to continue working while studying…you know, so we don’t lose our house and all that stuff…I’ll be doing my undergraduate degree by distance education, which will be interesting to say the least. Interesting because of what I’ll be studying, interesting because I’ll actually be using my brain again and interesting because I’m usually a very good procrastinator and this will really test my will-power skills.
The uni I’m enrolled at has these awesome free courses to ease people into what will be expected of them at uni and refresh the memory on things such as essay writing etc.
So I’ve been spending my work holidays doing 4 of these courses, the first 2 were peices of cake. One was an intro to online learning…finding resources on the net and learning how to use the uni’s websites and forums etc. It was pretty simple for me as I’m no newbie to the intertubes and am quite comfortable finding my way around it.
The second course I did was a simple introduction to essay writing, time management etc. Pretty interesting and I was really pleased with my results.
This one I’m doing at the moment though is giving me a bit of a headache. Its main focus is critical thinking and essay structure. Things which I haven’t even thought for a second about since finishing TAFE 6 years ago.
We have to write an essay on “The value of the tobacco industry” using critical thinking skills. I can get all the reference information I need in the world and quite enjoy finding the resources but the problem comes when I try and transform that info into an essay that is supposed to demonstrate my critical thinking skills.
I did an essay yesterday and asked hubby to go through it last night and boy did he go through it with a big fat red pen. His major criticism was that I was just parroting the information I gathered and whacking it in there without really thinking about it.
True, true, true.
And this morning I think I figured out why I’ve been finding it so hard to take sources and think about them rather than just whack them in there willy nilly. The answer is because I work in a high school and all I’ve done for the past 7 years is help junior kids with their assignments which mostly require no original thought and thats the process my brain has got used to. Just find the info and put it in….thats all.
So today was spent trying to retrain my brain into the way it will have to think for the next four years. And I’m pretty happy with the outcome. The essay is DONE, after another red-penning by hubby, and handed in…woot! Now to wait for the results.
One more of these intro courses to go before the uni semester starts in a few weeks then the real fun begins!
Stuff and nonsense 