TMA 03 Word Cloud

My latest TMA was due slightly inconveniently on the 9th of January. I'd kind of fallen behind in the run up to Christmas, mainly because I was more interested in knitting socks and watching Christmas films than in studying. I meant I had a couple of days where I had to do a week's worth of work in a day, which I managed.

Obviously I wouldn't recommend studying like this, but as I had picked which of the two options I was going to do, I read those bits of the block with that essay question in mind. It helped me to stay focused on what I needed to talk about in my assignment. I won't really know if this paid off until I get my marks back though.

This assignment called for a study of three texts; one being an extract from a scene in Peter Pan and the other two being poems from the 100 Best Poems for Children book. I picked one called 'I Can't Find My Teddy Bear' and another called 'Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony' along with the opening of Peter Pan. The assignment brief asked you to look at the way that the family was celebrated and the anxieties they demonstrated.

I picked all three because of the similarities I could see in their portrayal of the family unit as well as the gender roles represented, and also looked at the fear of loss which seemed to be shared in all three. I honestly could've talked for two thousand words alone on 'I Can't Find My Teddy Bear' and was well over my word limit by the end of my first draft.

This does not normally happen. I always work out what the minimum number of words I can write will be and then aim for that, because when I go over, if I just go over by say 10% I should still be within my ideal word count. This time I just couldn't help myself and I kept on finding new things to say.

In the end I cut a massive chunk about financial anxieties which was probably really, really, relevant and I'll probably get notes in the feedback saying I should've mentioned it, but I couldn't cut anything back. By removing all references to that I was able to remove 208 words straight away.

My main feedback on my last assignment was that my introduction wasn't very strong. I made a huge effort on my introduction this time around. I think that by comparison my conclusion is quite weak so I'm expecting some comments on that. It'll be interesting to see how I get on with this one.