student loan

University Challenge

I haven’t written about my mind in a while. To be honest I’ve done my level best to occupy my mind on other things. But you get reminders about certain things on a regular basis that spur you to think about important things, or rather things that are important to you.

There are two things that I think about a lot. Firstly, university. It has been getting me down a bit in recent months (or is that recent years?). The latest farce is the timetabling – of the thousands of modules available at the university, and of the millions of combinations I could pick modules from them, I manage to pick two within the School of Maths and Stats that clash. I’ve emailed my personal tutor who is “looking into it”, but the deadline for locking down the timetable has passed, and I expect that nothing has happened. I wonder why I stay there sometimes.

The second thing is my future. It’s quite a varying subject: but I think about what I might be doing in, say, ten years time. Where might I be? Who might I be with? What might I be doing? I could be in my own house earning loads and being generally rather successful. I could be in the circus with the rest of the clowns. I could still be at home paying off my student loan.

Is it something I should worry about? I think the resounding answer is yes, though many might try to persuade me otherwise. It would be the worry if nothing else that spurred me to take action. And there belies the problem. In my mind, I don’t worry about the future, I just accept it is going to happen and go with the flow. There doesn’t much point in making plans because there is no status quo, no norm. Things change as a habit and trying to make plans is a futile process because they too will have to change.

Or maybe that’s just me.

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Wasted

What a waste of a holiday. I planned to write up my lecture notes in order to cover everything I had taken down in the term. Needless to say I failed hopelessly.

I just couldn’t settle down to work, and when I did, it was often interrupted. This week we have some revision lectures, which will hopefully be of use to me – they usually are, but given that I haven’t revised much over Christmas, it will be more a case that the lecturers will go through the questions and write down everything I see.

My trip to Japan is a bit of a permanent distraction now – not that I’m complaining! But I feel guilty for several reasons.

Firstly, I’m taking out my student loan in order to go. However, this is money I will pay back – with interest – when I am earning.

Secondly, I will be going to a comparatively exotic place. This is a position most students don’t find themselves in. However, many students will have gone on holiday plenty when they were children, and this is something I haven’t experienced, so this is my justification!

Thirdly, Mum. She has hardly ever had a holiday, particularly abroad. I feel guilty bringing it up in conversation, because she won’t be going. I should take her somewhere, but she’d probably persuade me not to. Won’t know until I try, I guess.

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On Hold

Well, the British Airways sale has come, and there are no flights on sale to Tokyo for the time we want to go to Japan. So we decided we would go some other time. Actually, Weiran said “Let’s go some other time” and I said “ok”. Never mind. Although we do want to go to Japan and realise it will come to some expense, we don’t want to fork out more than our means, and seeing as my student loan is the primary financier of my trip, I don’t want to plunge myself into further debt than necessary.

So that was a bit of a blow. But not to worry. It gives me more time to learn some Japanese. I had neglected all my studies in the time I have been on holiday, so extra time to learn what is an extra-curricular activity can only be a good thing.

I have also registered with GCHQ, so I hope that I will receive notification if any posts arise. I guess the end of a year is as good time as any to think about the future.

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Just An iPod – Not Worth It

I have had

the most infuriating experience ever!

I am referring to the online application for Student Finance. I have provided my “feedback”:

This process has been a fiasco from start to finish.

I wish to apply for the income assessed help with tuition fees and the HE Grant, so I selected “no” when the questionnaire arrived at the question “Do you wish to receive non-income-assessed support…?”. From this, later in the questionnaire, I arrived at questions relating to the non-income-assessed support. I checked the relevant question and although I was confident that I had made the right answer, I altered the answer to check whether the ensuing questions would relate to the income-assessed support. It seems that the questionnaire at this point wanted to submit my application.

There is no way, as far as I can see, that I can cancel the request (at any stage of the application) on here. So even though I have a part-filled application, there is no way in which I can be certain that the information I have entered will be deleted.

The online process has been nothing short of a farce since the online application facility was (eventually) opened. I appreciate the difficulties involved in constructing an online form as huge as this, but if it doesn’t work then the onus falls on the students in the end. This year I will be submitting my application by paper – at least I can control what goes on it and where it goes.

I apologise for this rant, but please appreciate that I cannot afford to be the result of a failed experiment.

Stick to paper, kiddo!

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