S103: A slight hiccup

I had managed to complete TMA-4 just before Christmas which was well ahead of the early January deadline. I had an ulterior motive for this, and it wasn't just so that I could enjoy the festive season. I had wanted to see how well I got on with S103 and if I wasn't finding it too taxing, then I might be able to start a new course in the new year. So I was working on getting up a good head of steam so I could make some time for a 2nd level course, the biology one - S204.

So - I had handed in my TMA before Christmas, and started work on block 6, which was chemistry. However after Christmas, we had a slight break in proceedings. I turned up at the first tutorial of the new year, and the building it took place in was even more disorganised than before. They had a lot of building work going on fitting out new classrooms and things, and this time it was even darker and more eerie than the first tutorial. It appeared they were improving security and were going into a keycard system of access.

I checked at the reception and a security guard showed me to the tutorial room, which was in a slightly different place to some of the previous ones. Instead of an organised room with a circle of tables laid out as normal, with a smiling tutor, the room was dark, and empty. The guard switched on the lights and left, and I sat down and unpacked a few things. Another tutee turned up shortly, and we arranged the desks into our customary circle and chatted about things.

After about 30-40 minutes, we decided there must be a problem, and either we were in the wrong place, or maybe there was a tutorial going on elsewhere. Anyhow it looked like there wasn't going to be much happening tonight. We packed our things up, and put the tables back, and then made our way out.

Then, we found a problem. We managed to find our way back nearly to the entrance, before coming up against one of those keycard doors. We couldn't open it. We looked around for a button to open it, but there didn't seem to be one. We then tried to find another way out, and found a few other rooms and various places. Eventually we found an outside fire exit door, which said it was alarmed. However we decided after a bit of discussion to try this. We pressed the release button, and nothing happened. We tried a few other things, but it wasn't going to open.

So, we turned back and made our way to as near as reception as we could get, and tried banging on the door, but in vain. Finally my colleague had a mobile phone, so she phoned directory enquiries, and after a few attempts managed to get them to put us through to the college, and got through to reception where she asked them to come and let us out!

The next day I tried to contact my tutor to see if we'd got the wrong place or the wrong day or something, but I didn't get a reply. So later in the week I contacted the regional center, who moved swiftly to sort things out. It seems my tutor had been taken into hospital and with Christmas and the new year things had got a little confused.

Anyway, the centre found us a new substitute tutor, and arranged for our TMAs to picked up and marked by alternate tutors, and everything was soon back on track.

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