TMA01 feedback, a re-rescheduled tutorial, a NASA talk, Moon Night, and revision for MST124

TMA01 was marked and returned to me a day before the 10 working day soft deadline. 88% isn't a bad mark, but I would have liked it to have been in the mid-90s. Looking at the tutor's comments I can see it was marked fairly so I have no complaints. According to the assessment criteria, I only have to get an average of 24% in the 3 remaining assignments, or 72% in a single one of them, to be eligible to sit the final exam in June.

I got full marks for question 1, with a compliment about setting the planetary radii calculations out clearly. I seriously muffed question 2, with only 8 marks gained out of 16 available. The issue here was the lack of detail in my descriptive answer on early planetary formation. I got full marks for question 3 which involved plotting a spidergram, with comments about my explanation being very clear, and I only dropped 1 mark out of 19 for question 4 due to quoting the incorrect numbers of significant figures for the crater calculator result and not describing a particular type of crater well enough.

The tutorial on Chapter 7 and 8 of the Introduction to the Solar System book, which was supposed to take place on Monday 15th of next week was rescheduled for Friday 12th, and a few hours later rescheduled again for Friday 19th. This was done by one of the better tutors, so you can imagine what the others are like.

Every so often there is a talk arranged for the wider OU science community, not just those enrolled on the S283 module, and on Monday there was such an event. A NASA scientist gave an inspirational talk which was very good, even though it was really aimed at younger people starting off on a career in the physical sciences. Rather sadly, the scientist had just been made redundant.

There was another good tutorial by a science tutor who teaches on a range of modules, but in this case was taking a 'Revise and Refresh' tutorial which is designed to bridge the gap between the maths covered in S111 Questions in Science, a level 1 general science course, and MST124 Essential Mathematics 1, which I hope to be starting in February of next year. Most of it was revision for me, because I did A level Pure Mathematics back in 1980, but it was well worth attending because it was so well presented and there were a few things that I had forgotten. This tutor also teaches on MU123 Discovering Mathematics, MST124 Essential Mathematics 1, S111 Questions in Science, MST224 Mathematical Methods, MST210 Mathematical methods, models and modelling, S227 Core Physics, SM380 Quantum Physics and SM381 Electromagnetism so I'm hoping that our paths will cross again in future modules. Part 2 of this helpful bridging resource will take place in a few days time, which I suspect will be as good as Part 1.

At the same time as the Revise and Refresh session was happening, there was supposed to be a livestream of a ticketed 'in person' Moons Night event at the OU campus in Milton Keynes. Details were supposed to be posted a few hours before the actual event, but nothing appeared on the forums as far as I could see. There was also a rumour that it was being recorded for viewing in the future, but no details have appeared about that either. The nearest we got was a three and a half minute interview with ballet performer and former S283 student Erica Horwood by the module chair Prof David Rothery, which appeared on YouTube.

Rather interestingly,  I got an email from my tutor saying that the OU shuts down over the Christmas and New Year period, but as they taking some annual leave a week earlier, will therefore be incommunicado for the next three weeks or so. Without wishing to sound sarcastic, I don't think too many people will notice.