University challenge

Going to university is a big deal at the best of times – a mix of all sorts of emotions for everyone concerned. For young people there’s the excitement – and maybe anxiety – about being more independent, of starting a new phase in their lives combined with the slight terror that this is it – adulthood is on its way and they are on their own, sink or swim.  I remember my oldest daughter telling me off for asking her ‘too many questions’ [I’m a journalist, what can I say] when we met up after her first week or so. She wanted me to treat her as if nothing had changed. She missed home a lot and took lots of photos of the family with her when she came home. But she also got to know lots of new people.

For parents university is also a mix of emotions, mainly, for my part, anxiety-related ones. Will they be okay? Will they be lonely? Will they be safe? Every potential disaster scenario goes through your brain and yet you know that it is also your role to encourage them to be independent and to be excited for them and what the future could bring – even though you miss them intensely. For siblings, even if they play it cool, all the dynamics change, which can take some adjustment. It’s a lot and that’s all without additional technology-driven problems.

Daughter two has been at university since mid-September, but she is still not registered. She applied in 2020 in upper sixth and accepted a place at another university. By 2021 in a world of huge turbulence she had changed her mind. She reapplied to the university she is now at and was accepted, based on an improvisation session [she’s doing drama] where she was asked to play her icon. “I chose you,” she said, possibly ironically. So far so good.

The problem is that the computer doesn’t seem to realise that. It insists that she has rejected her offer even though everyone and his aunt knows this is not the case – mainly because I wrote to them all. This has been going on since the beginning of the year and is still no nearer resolution. It has not been helped by the fact that all the admissions people seemed only to be able to operate via email and it took 10 days on average for a reply which tended to say something obvious or to blame Ucas when it was not their fault and so required a follow-up email. A simple conversation would have made life much easier. This is what gives working from home a bad name. I work from home. It doesn’t mean that I cannot be contacted by phone.

By summer the university had found some sort of workaround. We thought all was well. Then we tried to book halls. Computer says no. So we had to go through all sorts of emails/chatrooms and the like until we finally got a room. In September, we rolled up at the university, got a key and daughter two booked a meeting to get registered. The only problem was that she needed a registration number and the only way you could get that was through the university email. However, you could only access the university email if you were on the system. Daughter two was not on the system.

There then followed multiple trips to chatrooms, talks with student reps and the like, but never an actual member of staff. Daughter two was missing lectures and stuck in her room. She couldn’t get into the university without a student card and she was worried about not being let on the shuttle bus to the city [the campus is several miles from the city] where the university’s main building is if she didn’t have a student card. She also couldn’t apply for a student travel card with a student card.

I asked if she could meet an actual staff member to talk it through. The university kept blaming Ucas. I knew, after several months of this, that it was their IT system. Eventually, she met someone who was very nice and he apologised and said it was indeed an IT problem, but he had no idea when it would be fixed. Because we now know what it is and that it will be fixed at some point, she can now attend lectures. Hoorah! She just can’t get into the building unless someone lets her in and has no access to university email.

In the meantime, I received an email today from the university she accepted back in 2021. She had informed them via phone, email and Ucas early this year that she was now rejecting the offer and going elsewhere. They were trying to get in touch with daughter two to welcome her to the university…

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