I reached the Island this week.

Which Island is this, I hear you ask? Well, it’s the Island all students reach, the Island between the end of exams and the publication of results. The Island where all is well, where you can no longer do anything to affect the results, so you may as well enjoy the sunshine and relax.

Stress and revision are no more, and now I have time and space of mind to reflect on the OU experience.

To be honest, though, I haven’t been stressing all too much about the exam. For several reasons.

 One: they have a score-calculator, which calculates your overall score from any essay results, plus estimated results from any bits you might not have completed yet. Although I had to sit the exam in order to pass the module, I don’t have to pass with flying colours. I have enough in the bank from the essays.

Two: it’s an open-book exam with 24 hours in which to complete it. And they give you advance notice of the chapters or topics. Not just previous papers to look at to get a feel for it, but the specific bits of the course. It is, in theory, a three-hour sort of exam. That is, if it was in an exam hall, under exam conditions, you’d have three hours to complete it. But Covid, etc., and they haven’t returned to in-person exams yet. Or possibly ever.

And Three: I’ve just been doing a stand-alone module, to keep my brain active while I’ve been on maternity leave. I don’t need this for a degree, it was purely for personal interest, and to see if I could still write a decent essay. And to see if the OU way of studying worked for me. Just in case I decide to do an MA. My BA was about a decade ago, at a traditional university.

And yet, despite not really worrying about the exam, it does still feel good to put my text books away. To rediscover that childhood feeling of being free – free I tell you! – for the summer.

Now. What do I think of the OU?

You do have to be self-motivated. There’s no one making sure you attend lectures (under pain of being kicked out if your attendance falls too low; although there’s usually at least one recorded lecture per lecture-session). I can’t say if your tutor chases you for essays: I managed to get mine all in on time, despite some of Tiny’s best efforts. And the exam.

But you do have all your deadlines, essay questions and lecture-dates from the very beginning.

I liked the text books, and having them all from the start. They have good-sized margins for writing in. I liked having all my deadlines from the start too, so I could try to plan my year, and my tutorials, which makes it easier to prioritise the studying.

And the guidance for the essays! The only one which really was as rubbish as I felt it to be was the one in January, when Covid caught up with us and the exhaustion of new motherhood. I don’t actually remember studying much that month…And I didn’t really read the guidance, just wrote a load of words and hoped for the best…But the others turned out to be half-way decent.

It did, however, feel a bit weird that only one of the essays required what they call Independent Study references. Most, I could have got away with just referencing the provided text books.

But, ultimately, would I do an MA with the OU?

Answer: I’d consider it. Or another’s distance-learning course. Just maybe not with quite such a small Tiny.