In Sapa, Vietnam

In Sapa, Vietnam

About Me

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Sharing time between Southampton and Noyal-Muzillac in southern Brittany. Sports coach, gardener, hockey player, cyclist and traveller. I studied an MA in Management and Organisational Dynamics at Essex University in 2016-17. Formerly an Operations Manager with NEC Technologies (UK) Ltd.

Wednesday 7 January 2015

Back to University

Walking today: 3.7km

It's 32 years since I last studied in a University environment, graduating from the University of Southampton (not to be confused with the young upstart Southampton Solent University which was simply a College and not even a Polytechnic in my day) with a degree in Physics and Electronics.

I got a 2ii (a 2-2), this was at the time colloquially referred to as a "Sportsman's Degree" or a "Desmond"

- Sportsman as in if you had a life at Uni and played for a University first team you clearly hadn't had enough time to study enough

- Desmond as in Desmond Tutu (ie: a 2-2):





Although I toyed with the possibility of doing an MBA at one stage in my career (and I do have a current Library Card for Southampton University Library as part of my Alumni membership) I haven't been involved with University study since.

If you haven't heard of a MOOC (pronounced "Mook") let me introduce you to the concept of a Mass Open Online Course. Mass as in lots of people doing it, often over ten thousand, Open as in no formal entry requirements and anyone from anywhere in the world can do it, Online as in online - everything is delivered electronically and Course as in course.

On Monday I started my first MOOC offered by the The Open University, reigniting my teenage hobby of Astronomy by taking "In the Night Sky - Orion"



The view of Orion last night was good although the moon rather washed out the possibility of photography (the image above is from NASA .....). There's also a reasonably bright comet, Comet Lovejoy, in the region of Orion which adds some extra interest:

Comet Lovejoy will not return to Earth for 8,000 years

The course lasts for four weeks, the first week isn't too hard ....... so far.

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