The pain of essays

I hate writing TMAs.

I've just submitted my second one. I was going to hold out, keep revising it, and submit it closer to the closing date (which is in 9 days), but the PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE got to me. So it's gone. And now I will attempt to forget it EVER HAPPENED.

Even with analysing the question, reading the assignment guidelines and considering my grasp of the subject to be pretty good. I think I've done a dreadful essay. I wrote an ESSAY PLAN, for god's sake. I haven't written one of those since I was 17, under duress from my extraordinarily evil English teacher. I wrote my essay plan weeks ago, long before I'd finished the block. When I came to writing the essay itself, I looked over my plan, nodded at my own amazingness and went ENTIRELY BLANK. I started writing randomly and somehow, it became coherant. I cut about 300 words out, rearranged it a bit, and decided that it was actually Quite Good.

Then doubt set in. My last essay was shocking. Well, it wasn't objectively, but to me it was shocking and I, originally, thought it was quite good. So, for several days, I have pondered and edited, and re-read units and decided I am dreadful. My essay, once something I could read, and follow and feel faintly proud of has filled me with ANGER. I can't even read it anymore, it's like I know it off by heart and the words just blend into a giant, glowing turd on the screen. Dread, unwholesome DREAD at seeing some painfully crap number appear on my student record again, has reared it's vile head.

So, I will attempt to wipe it from my mind as my tutor won't mark it for a couple of weeks. It's my baby's birthday tomorrow *yay*. Time to concentrate on the child, for once.

MOAR essays

I haven't written in an age. Mainly because nothing has riled me of late and I haven't felt the need to pontificate at length about religion or the perils of Amanda Holden. Since I last wrote, Blogger has changed 'backs off hissing'. I think it's a sign of getting old when websites change, and instead of embracing the new technology, you bitch and moan. It won't run on my phone anymore! Boo!

It is TMA time again. Already. They get closer together as the course progresses, though there's six weeks between the last one and the exam. My exam date is the two year anniversary of my ex buggering off, so I shall have a welcome distraction. I took a different approach to this essay, since my last one didn't work.
First, I actually wrote an essay plan. It was a very brief essay plan, but a plan nonetheless, and in doing so, I ANALYSED THE QUESTION. Second, I started writing somewhere in the middle of the essay because I literally had no idea how to start. It would seem to be a downside of planning an essay. You know what you want to say but then brain and hands do not connect. You end up spouting something that reads very much like a 6 year old's What I Did In The Holidays story. "Bowlby wrote about children who attach to their mummys because they love their mummy the most. But then they wake up and it was all a dream"
Ahem.

So, the bones of my essay are in place. I've used references to back up points, rather than just dumping them in the middle of a paragraph and hoping that's enough. I have Harvard referencing DOWN. I need to carve about 200 words off the word count, and rephrase some of it to answer the question a bit better, but otherwise, I *think* it might be better than the last one.

Submission deadline is in two weeks, so I have some time to DWELL and revise endlessly. I also need to do the other two mini-essays, one of which is 'how do you think you did?'. For which, I may just write this blog address.

Once this TMA is submitted, I'm a third of the way through the course. Huzzah!