I Think I Have Gone Slighty Mad

You know when you do something in life and you really wonder why you do it? I think my recent battle with the big C for the third time has done something to my brain.

I have a “bucket list” – a list of things I would like to do/wish I had done in life; and now I have gone and actively registered for one of these things. I have decided to study towards a Masters degree in English through the Open University. I have actually registered for the thing – and after a couple of modules that I need to do first (seeing as my first degree has NOTHING to do with literary critical analysis and big important literary jargony type words) – I will be the Mary Beard of the Literary world. Well, almost.

Because I already have a degree, I don’t need to do another undergraduate one – thank goodness – but the staff at the OU have recommended I get up to senior arts student level by doing these two modules first….the first one involving scrutinising 14 (yes FOURTEEN) pieces of writing, six dissertations and an exam. Sounds a bit like a Christmas carol! I now have the reading list which includes weird and wonderful concoctions such as:

The Sign of Four – Conan-Doyle
The Duchess of Malfi – Webster
Othello – good old Willie Shakespeare
Wuthering Heights – Bronte (no not the Kate Bush song! – plus I’ve already read it)
Candide – Voltaire (read this one!)
Oroonoko – Behn
The Lonely Londoners – Selvon
The Emigrants – Sebald
Dancing at Lughnasa – Friel (yeah, I hadn’t heard of this either!)
Dubliners – Joyce (have read this one – nah nah nee nah nah!)
The Beach at Falesa – RL Stevenson
The Confessions of an English Opium Eater – DeQuincey
Questions of Travel  – Bishop
Metropolis – Fritz Lang

I’ve read maybe three of the above, so that means I have eleven to wade through before the course starts in September. Right now I am thinking “waaahhhh” and now you will see why I think my cancer treatment has done something to my brain!

That’s nothing to what I will have to do in the next module! And I am already fretting about what I will find 80 pages to write about in my Masters dissertation……

See that bucket list of mine – I think it needs revising…….. As for now, I have to pick one of the above to start on tomorrow. Eeny meeny miney mo……