I've decided to withdraw from the MA By Project.

I have decided to leave the MABP course at the London Metropolitan University.

This feels a comfortable decision.  Not a good one, but right.  I really dislike the way London Met conducts itself as an organisation.  Their invoicing system is unclear, because it only specifies tuition fees on the Reminder - no date, no course number, no module number or name, no indication of early payment discount, no indication of previous over- or under-payments and does not call its demands for payments an Invoice.

The Head of School sacked our very competent Course Leader, Linden, last year.  This was a politically motivated sacking as part of a reorganisation.  We have had alternative module leaders who had different skills which did not meet my needs.  The Theory module was shambolic - constantly changing classrooms because the module leader did not like our allocated room, so we wasted time each class finding where we were meeting, no analysis, no focus on students' choice of texts, lots of reading out loud by our tutor.  For our Developing Project module, I did not realise until a month before the end of the second semester (!) who the module leader was, and only had one tutorial with her just before the end of project.  We seemed to have lots of odd classes which appeared to be random exercises drawn from BA courses.

Then my feedback for the Developing Project module turned into a Viva, and made it very obvious the 3 assessors did not understand my work.  I was informed I had achieved 62 and 65, and when I looked up what 62% meant, the words said "significant omissions" - but I don't know what they are!  Then when the results were published I had achieved 67%.  Even with an adjustment for the scores being worth 30% and 70% of the overall mark, I don't understand this.  Then I checked in more detail on the university website and my marks for this module had become 66 and 68%, averaging 67%.  So maybe the assessments had to be moderated ... after feedback?

I had attempted to conclude the course by enrolling for the final 60 credit module, which was to be completed in 3 months June-August.  But this meant working for 50 hours a week ... which I just cannot do.  My technique, cross stitch, is very slow and I need more time to gather data and reflect.  We were one week late starting the module, the second week was spent in feedback (making me very demoralised) and the third week was discussing the 6-8000 word report we need to complete.  I can't even imagine rushing to gather 8000 words worth of data, while racing to complete a sampler.

Linden is disappointed but understands my rationale.  I want to continue as a student so she is happy to continue to supervise me.  She also suggested I write to Jill Journeaux, our course verifier, to see whether I could join Coventry university, or anywhere else.  This I have done.

I have also emailed the Personal Academic Tutor as I cannot find the form I need to complete to withdraw from the course on the university website.