And Now, We Wait...

So that's it. My OU degree is done and dusted. I managed to survive sitting at a small desk for three hours with nothing but a bottle of water and a bar of chocolate for sustenance and only my calculator and reference books for company. The first part went pretty much by the numbers, with the expected questions about ATM cell sizes, CSMA/CD collision domains, and object models. Part 2 was a bit tougher, with a few surprises (I think this was the first year ever that there was a question on the Bellman-Ford algorithm instead of Dijkstra), and left me burbling on in a vague manner about TMN function blocks (don't ask!) and elements of MPEG encoding.

I'm confident of a pass, and I'm pretty sure it'll be better than the basic 'Pass 4' grade, but beyond that I don't know. It just depends on how close I got with my random burblings. According to the OU website, the results for this course should be available by mid-December, and I should receive an offer of a degree shortly afterwards. There's nothing more that I can do but wait, but it'll feel like a very long wait...

A Glimmer of Light Ahead

So, seven years since I signed up and I have now reached the final hurdle. Yep, tomorrow is my final exam for my OU degree.

The course this year has been a struggle (officially this was meant to take about 16 hours per week and I have also been doing a full-time job and trying to do my bit with raising a new baby) and revision has been intermittant, but thanks to <3 covering for me over the last few days I think I'm just about ready. This exam allows me to take some reference material with me and to annotate it as I see fit. A lot of my time has been spent working on indexing key sections and adding extra diagrams into margins and spare pages. I'm confident of a pass, but beyond that I don't know.

The result is due in before Xmas, and I should get my offer of a degree shortly after that. It's going to feel like a very long wait...