#1: OU Students Do It In Their Spare Time
True. This is what Daphne thinks it currently is, and she may be right for all I know.
#2: OU Students Do It From A DistanceAlso true. And suggesting that they are aloof, lone wolves, rather in the manner of Clint Eastwood.
#3: OU Students Do It All The Time
Yep, you have to keep at it; and you also have to do it whilst holding down a full-time job, otherwise it feels like cheating. It may sound tiring but like any other mono-mania (dipso-, megalo-, ego-, klepto-, nympho-, etc) it’s simply another way of getting your rocks off!! Not always so much fun for those around you of course (ok, tigers, the jury’s still out on nympho-).
#4: OU Students Do It Anywhere
Studying should be done in a study, but no OU student will have one of these. Instead they’ll have a kitchen table, a bed-sit, or simply a cardboard box in a Woolworth’s doorway. But they’re great improvisers: they do it when the kids are watching cartoons, at night when keeping the light on most annoys the landlord, or in the soft toys section after bribing the security guards to go on a prolonged “comfort break”.
#5: OU Students Do It For Free
Studying with the OU is really cheap compared to other ways of doing your head in. Why get yourself into the clasps of usury by paying out to one of those gaudy, tarted-up Jezebels with stupid names like “Oxbridge” or “Redbrick”? Why pay for it??? I never have, much. At the OU your bank balance increases at the same rate as your brain, and not having had a life for several years will have seemed a small price to pay.
#6: OU Students Do It When You Don’t Want Them To
Follows logically from #3. Actually, OU rapists are surprising rare considering the frustrations of distance learning. However, the rape of OU students is a distressingly common event. This is because they’re so knackered at end of an evening’s study (after a hard day at the job they’re so desperate to leave) that their wives/husbands/cell-mates really have no other choice. “Oh give it rest, I’m exhausted - can’t you wait another 3 years?? Oh all right, if you must, but I’ll be asleep”.
#7: OU Students Do It: The University Of Life
Rather a portmanteau title, admittedly, but then so was “Carry On... Follow That Camel”. (No graduate has more right to inverted snobbery than an OU graduate, so why not even “The University Of Hard Knocks”?). And you have to admit that it’s simple but brilliant. The pinheads who think up slogans like “Pure Genius” for Guinness beer etc get paid a fortune, so where’s mine?
So its slogan should be "The university for students who want to study rather than get laid". No wonder it's fees are so low.
ReplyDeleteOU Students Do It In The Middle Of The Night While Watching Overly Hairy and Deeply Unfashionable Men Explain How On BBC2
ReplyDelete(*Note: This image of the OU may be slightly out of date)
"So its slogan should be "The university for students who want to study rather than get laid"."
ReplyDeleteI thought that OU summer schools were little more than week-long bacchanalian feasts.
By strange synchronicity, I have this very week signed up for an OU self-contained short course, to see if I like it/can manage it at all before embarking on a whole degree thingy. I'll let you know my experiences in due course.
ReplyDeleteA Gypsy artist of my aquaintance (no, not Byard) has been studying some alarming branch of physics with the OU for some years. She dresses in leather bodices, and her best friend on the course is a "lifestyle" dominatrix.
ReplyDeleteFor good money I will divulge which summer schools they attend.
"For good money I will divulge which summer schools they attend."
ReplyDeleteHows about a pint of Feelin Foul and a packet of peanuts?
You had me all geared up to sign up until I read how these things affect ones love life
ReplyDeleteOU students do it for themselves.
ReplyDeleteSx
OU Students Do It The Hard Way. I'm not sure I want to go where any double entendre takes one, but it must be true enough.
ReplyDeleteI was sent down from the University of Life.
ReplyDeleteHa! Good, Bananas, but there are always exceptions;-)
ReplyDeleteHi Andy, that image was still just about up-to-date when I started my studies there, but I dare say it's all much more shiny now.
Francis, maybe they were, I don't know as I never went to one; I needed all my holidays for studying and for, errr, holidays.
Great, Gyppo! Don't listen to my take on things here: I make it sound more miserable than it is in an attempt at entertainment. The best course I did was one on Homer - recommended.
Boyo, I'm not quite sure what qualifies somebody to be a "lifestyle" dominatrix. Post some pictures so we can get an idea.
Sorry, Lulu, but as I was saying to Gyppo it's really not as bad as I've made out. And I should come clean now: I managed to wangle a four-day week with my then employers for some of it and then had part-time jobs when I completed it whilst in Denmark.
Scarlet, yes, that was one of the ones that I purposely avoided!
Welcome to you, Brother Tobias, and yes, that was the other one! It wasn't really that hard - depending what it refers to, obviously.
Many brilliant people have been "sent down", Kevin. Consider it to be the mark of genius.
Swap the nuts for crisps (saltn'vinegar) and you've got a deal, Francis.
ReplyDeleteGadjo, professional dominatrices do it for money then go home to eat chips and watch Coronation St like the rest of us.
Their "lifestyle" sisters do normal things for money then go home, hang their boy/girlfriends upside down and Brasso their tender parts before eating quails eggs and listening to Wagner. Or so I gather.
Gadjo, Andy - I got my exciting (yes, genuinely - it's on a subject I loved as a small kid and have always been drawn to) package of OU materials yesterday, and this morning popped the DVD in to have a butcher's while doing a bit of pre-dawn housework.
ReplyDeleteThe opening shot featured a man in an anorak who looked alarmingly like the comedy actor Dave Lamb (the token white guy in 'Goodness Gracious Me'P) but with a dreadful 1970s footballer-style afro.
He knew his stuff and was good at explaining it, but even I winced at his fashion sense...
Who'd have thought Dave Lamb was interested in Practical Colonic Irrigation (Module One)?
ReplyDelete'OU students don't know when to STOP doing it', or
ReplyDelete'OU students do it for longer'.
Oh, that's already taken. I see.
Practical Colonic Irrigation (Module Two) involves two middle-aged men in Packamacs and cycle clips.
ReplyDeleteBoyo, there should an OU module called Lifestyle Dominatricity. Along with the paperwork it comes with videos featuring the usual bearded, cordoroy-clad chaps, plus a tin of Brasso.
ReplyDeleteMan in an anorak with a dreadful 1970s footballer-style afro? Which module is it, Gyppo? Something that involves outdoor fieldwork far away from human society? Rockall: Geography, Culture and Gannet Breeding, perhaps.
Dot, those two titles you suggest could stand alone in their own right and could supercede a couple of mine. I would personally sign up for them!
Kevin, each with a thermos of tea strapped to his saddle rack. At least, I hope it's tea.
Gadjo - in order to keep the suspense going just a little longer, I shall not reveal the subject of the course per se; suffice it to say that the man in the anorak used the word 'graveyard' in his opening sentence. And that also featured was a man from Aberystwyth, brandishing a hammer.
ReplyDeleteGyppo, is it A264. Welsh Serial Killers: Society, Symbolism & Psychosis?
ReplyDeleteOoh - close but no cigar. Although the terms 'Cambrian' and 'Silurian' do turn up in both the course you mentioned and the one I'm doing...
ReplyDelete