Studying at the Open Uni: Year One Recap

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For today’s study blog post, I’m going to be recapping my university journey so far. When this blog post goes live, I’ll have officially started my third and final year of university working towards a degree in Arts and Humanities (English Literature). I’ve been studying on a full time basis ever since I began my degree, but it’s definitely become progressively more challenging as you would expect. To begin with, I’m just going to recap my first year of university and my Year Two recap will be in a separate blog post (hopefully I will link it here when it goes live!).

Let’s get straight into the recap!

Year 1 Recap

During my first year, I studied modules A111 Discovering the arts and humanities and A112 Cultures alongside each other. For most Level 1 modules there are October and February starts, so you can start one of the modules in October and pick up a second one in February if you wish so that the modules only overlap for a few months. It just means that you don’t really get a summer break if you’re starting one of your next modules the following October.

A111 – Discovering the arts and humanities

This is a very broad module that essentially gives you a taster in all of the different humanities subjects including literature, history, classics, music, philosophy, art history, religious studies, and creative writing. It’s a great module for dipping into subjects that you might not have done otherwise. I enjoyed some of the classics and history topics (such as Cleopatra and Traditions of Ireland), as well as literature (such as Dickens) and creative writing.

Personally, I found this module easier than A112 and I enjoyed the variety of subjects that you get to study. As there was a choice of topics to choose from when it came to the assignments, it was easier to skip certain topics to save a bit of time. This is handy if you’re ever falling behind, but I don’t recommend it if you have the time to go through everything! To be honest, I ended up skipping topics that related to music and philosophy especially, simply because these didn’t interest me whatsoever.

For the literature aspect of things, we studied A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and some poetry. We also studied Antigone by Sophocles as part of the classics section. I really enjoyed A Christmas Carol and Antigone, but I can’t say I’m a huge fan of poetry!

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A112 – Cultures

In contrast with A111, this module only focuses on four of the humanities that you will have studied in the other module. So in this module, we studied classics, art history, literature, and creative writing (in that order, I think!).

To begin with I remember finding this module a little more challenging and time consuming than A111 when studying them side by side. There was more focus on independent studying at the end of each week which was what differentiated it from the previous module. The only topic I didn’t really enjoy all that much was art history, it’s not really my forte. Other than that, I found the other aspects of the module quite interesting and I really enjoyed them.

For the literature side of the module, we studied Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Twelfth Night by Shakespeare. As I chose the literature option for my end of module assessment, I also studied A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare. I enjoyed all of these, but Jane Eyre has to be my favourite! Having said that, I did quite enjoy writing my final assignment of the module on A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night, despite its challenges!

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Overall, both of these are good introductory modules if you’re looking to go into one of the degree pathways that the modules include, or even if you’re on an open degree!

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