I've been taking an English course by distance ed for about six months now. I suppose a more accurate statement would be that I've been taking my sweet old time with a distance ed course.
It's a first-year English course that I have to take to qualify for Teacher's College. When I did my previous degree I convinced my school to let me out of the mandatory English 101 type class that every undergrad has to take. Let me take this way cool second-year English course instead, I said, oozing charm and so very excited at the prospect of not having to read another "classic" Canadian novel or write another dreadful literary analysis.
But nine years later, my new school has an English 101 prerequisite, and they seem immune to my charm (and stunning good looks). Anyway, you can imagine that after trying to hard to avoid this course the first time around, it's with good reason that half a year after my start date I've still got two outstanding papers and an exam approaching.
If you are having trouble imagining the aforementioned reasons, here are a few to start you off.
1) Papers do not write themselves. I am sure this was a phenomenon that I was familiar with about a decade ago when I started my undergrad, however old age robbed me of my memory and the motivation to write thousands of words analyzing theme, plot, and other things I do not care about. I would be much happier to just read the short stories before bed, and maybe write a song about them, or make a new dish and name it after the story. Why can't profs offer to do assessments like that?
2) I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to schoolwork. And I spend far too much energy trying to make sure my essays compare and contrast in a manner suitable to someone who has a degree in language expertise.
3) I am also a bit lazy as far as reading all the extraneous garbage I am supposed to read in order to complete this course. "The Difference between
There,
Their, and
They're" is the actual title of an actual section of my text that I was supposed to peruse about halfway through the course. Yes, there are people who don't know their pronouns, but they're probably still in grade three. See what I did there?
4) Regardless of my efforts, I always get the same respectable yet mildly unsatisfactory mark on everything I hand in. If I didn't have morals (albeit questionable ones) I'd hand in a blog post see if he could tell the difference. Oops! Too late, already did that. And I got the same mark I always get! Hoorah.
The one saving grace in this course is that the final assignment has me doing a research project on a really excellent topic! I am so excited to write that paper. But first I have to see to this compare and contrast nonsense.
~g. mango is a non-traditional use of characterization to carry both plot and theme to their obvious blah blah blah
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