Ox Stew

First online ’tute’ for the Oxford course was last week.  Coursework started the week before.  Had bamboozled myself so much going down rabbit holes by day two, had to play hooky on day three, and go to the cinema to calm down.  Saw ‘The Death of Robin Hood’, which is brilliant.  Now wondering if the main reason for booking some online study was in order to re-experience that sublime state of being, absent in retirement; ‘playing hooky’.

There are more people on the course than expected, and wasn’t expecting men at all.  What a sexist.  Last Sunday, managed to lock myself out of the multi-factor authentication (MFA), and as had used three emergency backup codes already, had to email IT for a new QR code.  Not helped by the fact that the laptop’s haplessly App-less - am using that for Word note-taking, MacBook for watching lectures weekday mornings.  Meanwhile, there is a brace of pontificators on the course (ie folk, okay men, who hog the discussion board).  We’re instructed to post a discussion question each week about the coursework.  In my book, a question is one or two sentences in length, tops, perhaps a couple of bullet point ideas for possible discussions.  The brace posted three paragraphs and lengthy quotations from the likes of ‘The Golden Bough’.  Couldn’t discern any actual questions at all, just the noticeboard equivalent of the teacher from ‘Charlie Brown’. 

Final essay is only 1500 words.  Are they trying to get a million words out now?  Understand they may never have felt heard, but intrusive impositions never change that.  Couldn’t even turn off the daily notifications as was locked out and didn’t want to use another backup code as needed it for the zoom session. 

Note to self: DO NOT ROLL EYES WHEN CAMERA SWITCHED ON.

Death of Robin Hood

Charlie Brown Teacher

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough