With my translation project slowly drawing to a close, nothing would do but I must sign up with the Open University again.  I was missing it!  And as Antonia becomes more independent I am starting to look towards my plan for a Masters degree and eventually perhaps a doctorate.  Starting in September I will be taking a course in archaeology.  I have lots of other plans and my dear husband is quaking in his boots, in fear of their cost.  I don’t blame him either, it’s appalling how much extra I have to pay by living in Europe.

I don’t think my next course will qualify me to work on digs or anything like that, but I hope I’ll have the background to understand archaeology as it applies to areas of art history I’m interested in.  In the meantime, I’ve realised that I’m not going to be able to approach future study in the same leisurely manner I adopted in the past.  I’m going to have to squeeze my reading, and writing too, into short, intensive bursts, surrounded by periods of interruption.  These are not my best working conditions.

So… I’m developing a new method of note-taking, that involves taking the notes before reading the book.  (I love typing that with a straight face).  Seriously, though, I’ve decided it will make my life easier if my notes are based on the expanded book structure, and I can get the first part of that from the table of contents and headings.  I insert extra parts that might have been subheadings if the authors had chosen to go wild in that particular direction. Then I can quickly scan it and markup any parts that are likely to be relevant for particular questions, and include any further research or action items I need to do in separate headings.  I use a mindmapping software called FreeMind for this.  So far it seems to be working quite well.  I am finally working on reading my way properly through Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice as an introduction to the course which I think may be more content based.  It is a thick tome full of useful, well, theories, methods and practices many of which are more applicable to some interests than others.  So far I am getting through it pretty quick so maybe my method works!

I’ve done huge amounts of reading this week.  The hard thing is going to be finding the right balance.