Just as I thought I had got my head around the concept of arrays, I flicked through the associated question in my latest assignment and realised I knew nothing. I have absolutely no understanding of two-dimensional arrays, sub array processing, while loops, foreach loops (and when and when not to use them), casting etc etc.

Granted, I may be exaggerating a little here, but every time an assignment is due, my self confidence takes a hammer blow of a battering. Part of the trouble is possibly due to the fact that I’m maybe a little more bloody minded than I should be and maybe I should ask for more help now and then. Ah well…

One of the hardest parts of distance learning has undoubtedly got to be studying in isolation. Not having anyone readily available to bounce ideas off is unnatural in a learning environment. My student interaction is limited to reading carefully worded forum posts that provide absolutely no assistance.

Due to the extreme paranoia of  The Open University, no one can even fart in the wrong direction in case they get strung up and whipped for plagiarism let alone discuss an idea; one tutor actually warned us against going for coffee with fellow students after a tutorial for fear that we might all ravage each other’s minds with a lustful wanton abandon! What kind of way to learn is that? Consequently, the forums are useless.

So, night after night, I sit in front of a textbook, a laptop and an assignment sheet, desperately trying to iterate a loop or something equally as abstract in the hope that one day it will be worthwhile.

Sometimes, in the dark, I imagine I’m at a real University and I pretend I’m chatting to my peers about the course we’re doing, sometimes, we even sneak a peek at each others notes! But its all just a cruel fantasy.

After a long day battling with the code for one of my Open Uni assignment questions, I’ve finally got the FrogCalculator to work (please don’t ask). 

Now onto the second part of the paper with a very confusing CurrentAccount class to write. I’d love to publish the code, but don’t fancy taking my chances with the OU Invigilator!

Maybe when I’ve handed in the assignment I’ll pop the code onto the site so that everyone can have their own FrogCalculator, I don’t know how Sun Microsystems developed Java without it!