How Ready For Learning Are You?

Are you a Keen Katy or a Laid-back Larry? Let’s find out with a Definitely Scientifically Valid quiz!


Modules are ready, Welcome Forums are open, course materials are arriving through the post… It’s nearly time. Are you poised with pencils sharpened or are you getting in just one more rewatch of  every season of Schitts Creek before you crack open your course materials?

  1. 1 It’s 7.30am on a Monday. What are you doing?

    Old fashioned brass alarm clock

    1. Breakfast phase 1 underway, lunchboxes ready to be deployed.
    2. What? Monday?? Are you *joking*…?
    3. Trying to unsuccessfully re-dress a child whilst not actually being able to get dressed yourself.
    4. Zzzzzz…
  2. 2 If you had to live on one food forever (considering it was nutritionally possible to do so) what would it be?

    Dinner setting with two stacked empty plates on a white table cloth with cutlery to either side

    1. Anything anyone else makes. So long as it’s not lightly chewed fishfingers and pasta shapes, cold and unwanted after being so fervently demanded. Grown up food. Uninterrupted.
    2. Chilli, or something similar that goes in one pot and you can magically put together out of whatever’s in your cupboard, and make an astonishing meal from. You can just keep adding stuff to it for days, as well. No need to create extra washing up or involve more utensils. Just add tortilla chips.
    3. Fresh salad vegetables. Some olives; you know, those big nocellara ones. Hummus. Warm flatbread. Maybe some cheese - you can’t go wrong with a drop of baked Camembert. A few falafel. Perhaps a cheese and pineapple hedgehog? Oh! Those hors d’oeuvres that are tiny versions of things. Tiny burgers, tiny quiches, miniature pies, teeny eggs… Best get the matching tapas dishes out. And choose a wine. And a tablecloth!
    4. Kebab. Or pizza. Who delivers soonest?
  3. 3 What’s your fave learning soundtrack?

    light blue old school portable record player with stack of albums next to it.

    1. Rock, baby! You need those driving guitars to keep you motivated. And you’ve only written the lyrics to Highway to Hell in the middle of one essay. Ok. Two essays…
    2. Mozart. For the extra IQ points.
    3. K-pop. Math rock. IDM and Ambient. Barbra Streisand - the Broadway years
    4. Silence. Blessed silence through your noise cancelling headphones.
  4. 4 Who’s your personal hero?

    zoooooom graphic in comic book/lichtenstein style

    1. Bridget Jones from the eponymous books and films. A real person getting stuff wrong and still winning through in the end
    2. Ellen Ripley from the Alien films. She’d just nuke all this mess from space and start over - and save the cat, too.
    3. The Dude abides
    4. Beyoncé. Because you can have it all
  5. 5 Study time beverage of choice?

    margarita in a shade of blue that a margarita never should be

    1. You had a cup of tea around here somewhere. Or was that yesterday? This glass has liquid in it…
    2. Gin
    3. Coffee. Plenty of coffee. Gotta stay focused.
    4. You call it your signature cocktail. It’s whatever is left in the drinks cabinet, mixed together in a pint glass. Stirred, not shaken. Beer and absinthe was a mistake…
  6. 6 Who’s your best study buddy?

    Mr Owl

    1. Your dog makes a great laptop rest, and he always agrees with you when you have to make a decision about an essay question.
    2. Your cat once managed to upload your TMA early by sitting on my your keyboard. Does that count?
    3. The television. All hail CBeebies on iPlayer and the peace it brings.
    4. Your tutor! You email or call them at least once a day. It’s so useful having someone to answer every single question that comes into your head, ever.
  7. 7 What’s your get up for getting down to some study time? What’s the well-dressed OU student wearing this season?

    baby in a bunny onesie

    1. A bunny onesie. It’s warm, comfortable, and comforting for the wearer and for any nearby companion. It’s perfect attire for any occasion, too.
    2. Uh, this? It’s clean. Well, it’s from the ‘clirty’ pile. These are the perks of distance learning! No one knows how blurred the line between pyjamas and daywear has got.
    3. Yoga pants and coordinated t-shirt. Or tracksuit pants and sweatshirt. They’re all there in the wardrobe. You can be dressed and out of the house in under 5 minutes. In principle…
    4. Dress for success. Being smart on the outside helps you feel smart on the inside, and you’ve not ironed all your underwear for nothing.
  8. 8 Which book has had the biggest influence on your life so far?

    Vintage books in a row.

    1. Matilda by Roald Dahl. Books always overcome ignorance and bigotry. Telekinesis is pretty cool too.
    2. Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. No matter how much wild rumpus there is, your supper will still be waiting at the end. And it will still be hot.
    3. Go The F*** To Sleep by Adam Mansbach. This is your mantra. You recite it at least once a day in your head.
    4. The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. Pooh the bear. Not, you know…
  9. 9 Where’s your study space? Your special haven of knowledge.

    nice neat white desk with shelves beside and things on wall. and a surfboard. obv.

    1. Your desk is set up with your laptop stand and your desk tidy, under your wallchart and shelf of useful reference books, next to your Kanban board.
    2. Everything’s gone quiet. Quick. Get the OU Study app up on your phone and see how much you can get done!
    3. Yes. This is a workspace. It may look like a kitchen work surface and lots of stationery detritus to the untrained eye, but it’s actually a hub of focused activity. Unless the washing needs folding. Then it goes in that nice jute bag on the floor.
    4. It’s a laptop. It goes on your lap.
  10. 10 My theme song is:

    Boombox. like you'd carry around to play your theme song. 

How Ready For Learning Are You?

Created on
  1. Quiz result

    Super-keen Sacha

    Pixabay

    If there were marks for preparedness, you'd have a distinction every time! But be careful you don't get so caught up in the method that you neglect the content. What you write matters much more than how, when or what you write it in.

    You may have a notebook for making notes about your other notebooks, and every shade of highlighter known to man or woman, a wallchart as big as your wall and eighteen different sorts of sticky notes - but have you tried posting in your welcome forum yet?

    *Without* mentioning stationery...

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  2. Quiz result

    Chaotic Carla

    Pixabay

    Organisation isn't your strong suit. But because your life doesn't run to a schedule, trying to impose one on it would be doomed to failure anyway. You grab study time like everything else, where and when you can, and making sure you stay ahead of deadlines is what you need to watch out for. But your improvisational skills are amazing, as is your imagination. You always find a way around things. 

    It's just finding things that's the issue.

    You know you've got some highlighter pens, somewhere. Well, you've got a lid from one and a suspiciously pink stain on one of the sofa cushions. But you can underline stuff in biro just as well, and you know where your notes are, because they're all written in your textbook.

    Yes, very cunning. 

    Now, you just need to find your textbook...

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  3. Quiz result

    Harassed Hannah

    Pixabay

    Study from home, they said. You can just fit it around your daily life, they said. People do it whilst homeschooling triplets, working two jobs and dealing with rare and complex health issues, they said.

    Then here you are, trying to do 30 credits of Beginners French, but the cat's been sick on the dry cleaning you picked up this morning, your eight year old has come home and told you it's Harvest Festival *and* World Book day and you breezily said "You too!" to the barista who told you to enjoy your coffee earlier; tho at least the wet patch on the kitchen floor isn't the cat's fault, since it turns out the freezer is defrosting itself today. 

    Which is great. Of course.

    Still. Taking the drycleaning back again is supporting a small local business, there'll be some random tins in the cupboard for Harvest and your child has a whole host of emotionally disturbed Jaqueline Wilson characters to dress up as for World Book Day with no effort at all. As for the freezer, it's a very good reason to have icecream for tea. And pizza. And chips. And something beige in a bag...? And everyone *should* enjoy coffee.

    You're saving the day, one task at a time, just like we all are. We're all starting from different places, but we can all feel for each other's stresses and disasters. This isn't a race or a contest. It's a university. A school, where students learn *together*. Someone out here will have your back when the going gets tough - whether it's a broken nail, a broken heart or a broken bone.

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  4. Quiz result

    Chilled-out Chad

    Author’s own

    What week is it? Week three? Yeah, that's the week you're on. Well, some of it. You skipped over a lot. It's not relevant to the TMA, is it? You thought you'd go to a tutorial and catch up with everything there, but they all get booked up so quickly...

    No, you've not actually *tried* booking a tutorial yet.

    You're Pacing Yourself...


    Uh huh. I'd strongly recommend getting a couple of weeks ahead of the game, because you never know what life is going to throw at you. Bank some time if you can, whenever you can. There's no rule that says you can't go through cherry-picking which bits of the weekly tasks to complete, or doing prep for every TMA, if you like. Work however works for you.

    Go at your own pace, and ignore what other people are doing. If you want to work alongside the scheduled times that's absolutely fine. If something untoward does happen to set you back, then you shouldn't have an issue getting an extension, either. There are always ways around problems, if they arise. Student Support are always there for you.

    But try to avoid putting yourself in that situation if you can. Extensions eat into your next block, and may leave you with too little time for the next TMA, and you can end up with a domino effect that ultimately knocks into your EMA, and there's no extensions with EMAs...

    Working a little bit ahead gives you a safety net, and doesn't stop you going back and working alongside your tutor and tutor group when you're discussing weekly tasks or in tutorials.

    All that's best avoided is handing in your TMAs too soon. There's often some really useful advice covered in the weeks just before they're due that's worth waiting for.


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