Busy Week and the Start of Academia

This week is the first of my proper retirement and it has been a shock to the system. Studying railway history has at least for the first week proved challenging but very enjoyable. It is so far removed from my time in college that I might as well be on another planet.

Firstly as I expected everything is on-line. Each week we take a topic and the tutor suggests some reading and then poses some questions for discussion. So far so straightforward, but the questions are designed to provoke what I would call a seminar. The seminar of course takes place completely on-line, so this takes away a little of the live interaction that you might get in a seminar room. The comments tend to be just a little too polished, I certainly agonise over my turn of phrase. Perhaps this will become more natural as the term progresses and things become more naturel. It does however get me thinking.

The technology really makes the reading easy. I have purchased a core of the text books, but most things are accessible on-line, can be downloaded as a pdf, stored on the cloud, and are immediately available on my I Pad. Therefore I can take advantage of every moment to read, and also store the articles without taking up acres of shelf space.

I am nervous about the assignments as in just over nine weeks time I am going to have to submit a fully annotated three thousand word essay. I am already having some trouble with my footnotes. Even the magic of MS Word I manage to go off track.

Along the way I am learning some interesting facts, for instance I surprised Laura by telling her that in 1899 a railway company paid her alma mater the LSE £100 to take one hundred workers, presumably managers, on their courses. Seems like a bargain to me. I also though that the universal delivery of mail came in with the Penny Post in the 1840’s, it did not it did not come in until almost the end of the century propelled by the widespread use of the bicycle.

So when you add signalling at Goathland, and volunteering it has been a hell of a week.