Submitted my first Open University TMA. They aren’t called essays any more. I think it stands for Tutor Marked Assignment, but it might as well be Tomato Mozzarella Arrabiata, or Terribly Mundane Activity, for all the use it is as a teaching tool.

You aren’t allowed to do anything in education any more, it seems. Back when I was last formally schooled over a quarter of a century ago, you got given a question and had to use reason, argument, and sources to answer it. Nowadays, you must spend three quarters of your word count explaining the process by which you might eventually answer, should such a confrontational thing as a conclusion be demanded. Sir Humphrey Appleby would excel at it, although I struggle to see how this approach prepares anyone for the world of work, where you must often take a position and justify it in the face of opposition. Small wonder collective UK per-head productivity is dropping like a stone, when everyone is actively trained to avoid stuff. Not rocket science, is it? (Although there’s probably a TMA for that.)

I’m whingeing about this for two reasons. The first is that I’m incredibly disappointed . I feel cheated by a promise that’s not delivering. I signed up for this expecting to be intellectually challenged and have my interest awoken. Instead, what I am is indescribably bored and annoyed. It had the opportunity to be so much more than it is.

The other reason I’m pouting is that I tried really hard. I read and reread the textbook. I presented in exactly the format required. I ‘planned my paragraphs’ in the frankly insultingly childish way they demanded. I submitted before the deadline date. I really thought I’d ‘got it’…and what I actually got was a crappy 75%. Gutted. I’d been confident of getting at least 80-something, if not in the nineties. I’d understood. I’d done what they wanted.

Except, not. History’s repeating itself. This is just like school and there’s nothing I can do about it. My rubbish mark instantly plunged me into a slough of despond from which I’m yet to emerge. I don’t get why no one seems to question anything any more. We all have to think and act like little clones of one another or risk a barrage of disapproval for daring to entertain the concept of independent thought (which I’d always assumed was what University was about; forming opinions.) I perennially struggle with stuff like this: school underachieving, 9 to 5 annoyances, relationship frustrations, conventions of behaviour that make no appreciable sense. I know I’m meant to be doing stuff a certain way (the ‘right’ way); I just don’t know what that way is. It’s always left me on the fringes, feeling ‘other’. I thought, in middle-age, it wouldn’t be a thing - but here I am in the face of a fresh raft of rules and strictures, and I’m twelve years old once more.

Perhaps everyone else also feels demotivated and isolated, and they’re just terribly good at hiding it; at conforming? Seems I’m not. Instead of continuing with other work like a conscientious student, I’ve avoided any sniff of the Open University with the determination of a paranoid pensioner shielding from Covid. All I’ve done that’s remotely connected to Uni is to flick the Vs at my textbook whenever I pass the shelf it’s on. Not a very grown-up way to behave.

Oh, O U, you had such an opportunity to capture and convert this long-term sceptic! You failed by being patronising and dull in equal measure. When I think about you, I become that bolshy, rebellious, school-hating kid all over again. I’m incapable of obeying other people’s silly rules. They feel unnecessarily stifling, like when you do your sports bra up too tight. I’m evidently just one of those people who needs sufficient give to take a deeper breath.