I was just about to head off to bed when an email came through from the OU about a result being posted to the website. I wasn’t paying full attention so assumed it was my latest psychology assignment result (my tutor is remarkably quick at turning those around) and got a bit confused when there wasn’t a mark where I thought there should be one. I actually opened up the email rather than just read the title at this point and discovered that it was the result for my philosophy course that was in (pretty much just my exam grade as I already knew how I was doing on the TMAs and therefore what the maximum my overall course grade could be).

This time I navigated to the correct part of the website, held my breath a little and boom – 87% on my exam. People normally drop grades on the exam compared to the TMAs (usually around 10%) but I had done considerably better (hmm, wonder what that says about how my TMAs were marked?). The overall course result is the lower of your exam grade and your averaged/weighted TMA grade, so I got a pass 2 (aka a 2:1) due to my 72% grade for my TMAs.

They very handily gave a breakdown of what number and percentage of students fell into which gradings overall (A being 85-100%, B = 70-84%, C = 55-69%, D = 40-54%, E = 30-39%, F = 15-29% and G = 0-14%) and broken down for each question tackled. Looking at it overall I was one of only 21 students out of a total of 363 who showed up on exam day to get an A grade on the exam. For the questions I answered I was one of 6 to get an A on question 2, one of 11 to get an A on question 3, and one of 9 to get an A on question 6.

In conclusion, go me, I rock.

The final week of book study this week, with the final chapter of the final book on justice and equality. To change things up we were looking at some more modern philosophers with Nozick, Dworkin and Anderson, but never fear, good old John Locke still got a mention. It was interesting to see where some of the scary ideas favoured by the far right in the US got a lot of their arguments from (and then corrupted somewhat), and Elizabeth Anderson seemed particularly angry about trying to account for luck (good and bad), but political philosophy all seems to come down to ‘nice idea, but wouldn’t work in the real world’.

A final TMA to write next week before going away, one more online tutorial then it’s just getting my head down to revise and smarten up my handwriting as much as possible before the exam.

So just what is distributive justice? The first two activities in the chapter of this week’s topic did not help as they referred you to audio which you didn’t have. After a lot of digging it turns out they they goofed in the editing process and cut out the section that the activities discuss, leaving just a transcript of what was said. Helpful.

After a few thought experiments about islands and pork pies it was finally time to look at John Rowl’s theory about distributive justice, which seems to have boiled down to equality for all unless everyone can get a bigger bit of cake by discriminating against someone else, but only up to the largest piece of cake that those discriminated against can get. If the amount of cake that those being discriminated against starts to get smaller, then it’s a no go.

There was also something about a desert base whereby no-one deserves anything as it isn’t desert (or possibly turtles) all the way down.

I think I’m going to have some weird dreams after this one. Or maybe some cheesecake.

I am taking the scheduled Easter break to get a week ahead in my studies so that I can complete and submit my final assignment for this course before leaving for Bungay juggling convention (it is due during it), leaving me that time for pure revision for the exam. So this week it was more looking at political obligations and how they are created. Oh, and surprise surprise, up pop Messrs Locke and Hume. They’ll be getting their own set of index cards to revise from, I think they’ve appeared in each of the six sections that this course is divided into.

A lot of posturing from Locke about how a government should be formed (with the consent from those being governed by it), with Hume shooting that down with the evidence of history. Some amusing asides as to what can be considered “consent”, and how the “what if everybody did it?” argument doesn’t really work in the real world.

A little thing like the British Juggling Convention doesn’t get in the way of my running and also doesn’t get in the way of my studying. I need to use my official Easter break for Bungay, so am continuing to study whilst away at the convention, even if the promised quiet study room was locked and there were a couple of fire alarms in addition to workshop attendees to contend with.

This week started the final section of the module, looking at political philosophy. The first week is normally an introduction, which was helpful as the workload is often a little bit less. The very basics were introduced and we looked at a bit of Plato and Novick and the parental analogy and fair play arguments for political obligations. I disagreed with pretty much all of the examples, which was interesting, and made it look like I have philosophical anarchistic leanings, which was unexpected. I shall have to see how that develops through the rest of the subject.

A long tutorial this week, going on for two and a half hours before we were finally kicked out for the next people due in (including someone from one of my level 1 courses). Lots to cover including a fair few sidetracks, looking at mind and the upcoming TMA on Descartes. It seems like a lot of people have already started or in some cases completed their essays. I’ll be starting on Monday (lots of knitting and running to squeeze in this weekend). It’s not due in until Thursday.