Poo-gate.

Everything is getting too exciting!


The deadline date brought no surprises: rejections from both Leeds and Cardiff, although Cardiff did send me a lovely letter asking if I'd like to be on the waiting list as there were too many good applicants to offer everybody a place. Which was kind of nice.


Of course I firmed Southampton. I've sent in all my documents, health questionnaires and exam certificates. I've applied to Student Finance. And then last week I applied for accommodation.


The application is actually quite straight-forward: you have a series of drop-down boxes to choose from, which generally lead you to either one specific hall, or a choice of two. The Halls are spread out across the city, so choosing is a bit of a pain in the arse. I've read somewhere that 60% of students get their first preference, and of those that don't, 90% get their second preference. Which suits me fine.


Catered or non-catered?


To be honest, I'd never even considered being catered before attending the Open Day. At Southampton, this includes a breakfast and evening meal (with dessert!) Monday - Friday and brunch at the weekends and costs roughly £30 - £40 compared to self-catered students. 


The main draw for me is the removal of all catering stress: no compiling shopping lists, working out when and how to get to the supermarket. No time spent cooking and cleaning or waiting for the hob to be free. No stressing that somebody else has nicked your organic, hand-grown goji berries. Just a quick trip to the dining room (you can also get your food to take-out too).


Personally, I know that I'm going to stress about the cost of food and half-starve myself in an effort to save pennies, so at least this way mother knows that I'll be eating healthily (well, twice a day, five days a week).


As a budget-savvy student I'm already determined to regularly procure a croissant or two from breakfast as a free lunch/mid-lecture snack. And there's dessert on offer each evening. Count me in.


Standard, enhanced, en-suite or premium?


This caused me the biggest headache.


Standard rooms are cheap as chips (around £75 per week) yet residents could be sharing a kitchen and bathroom with between eight and twenty others. Okay, so it's not just one toilet but even so... 


Enhanced rooms, whilst slightly more expensive, have shared facilities between seven people. To be honest, this doesn't sound too bad on first reading and then I thought about it. Seven people needing to use the shower before a lecture, brush their teeth etc. Not even seven people you know (this could be literally anyone) what if it's a flat full of grubby, dirty lads? What if they make jokes about the smell of your poo? What if somebody (or me) has a particularly heavy night out and is sick everywhere? Or pees in the sink?


I did look into being enhanced, honest. I browsed through a few forum threads, weighing up the pros and cons between sharing (saves you around £30) or having an en suite. Lots of people had experiences from either side but one post in particularly cemented the deal:


"Worst I've seen is people not flushing, and some people leave the shower in a nasty state (grit, hairs, etc). 

I live in a flat of 6. In 2 weeks I might have to wipe the seat of the loo or flush it for someone else maybe 2/3 times, clean a proper mess in the shower once, remove hairs that aren't my own from the plughole 2/3 times. That's a maximum of 8 unpleasant bathroom related tasks for an £80 saving. £10+ per bathroom task. I would take up a part time job cleaning other people's bathrooms if the pay was that good. "

This came directly below a post entitled 'one of my flatmates has pooed in the shower'. I do not want to flush somebody else's faeces, pick out their hairs or be forced to wear flip flops in the shower. And hell-to-the-no am I cleaning poo out of the plughole. The author of the above post might seem quite unperturbed by this bathroom mess but that makes me more suspicious of people's standards of 'hygiene'. Own shower and toilet? Yes please.

*I haven't really mentioned Premium, because I haven't really looked into it. Essentially, you get a big bed and more space. Not really worth it unless you're planning to be boshing on the regs.

The next stage tends to be the boring bits of contract length (Easter or no-Easter, I'll go home and chill, thanks), mixed or single-sex (tough one, but girls tend to do my tits in more than boys) and then choice of complex (if you even get a choice).

I think now I just wait until June, when I get my address (exciting stuff!). If I'm honest, this whole 'waiting thing' is wearing a bit thin now. There's only so much Jesters-build-up that I can take.

Gap Yah Girl

I've spent the last week or so deliberating what to write as my next blog; I didn't have anything productive to write about my new-found gap year and I wanted to write a blog about the Derren Brown tour - but then realised I should wait to mention his new TV show in it as well (Miracles for Sale, Easter Monday, Channel 4, 9pm)

You can also watch the trailer here - I'm not hiding the fact I completely and utterly adore this man.

I'm doing it again; avoiding the subject. Right, so what I really need to talk about it my gap year. Two words that, six months ago, I would've chuckled at the thought of. I look back with mild embarrassment at how confident I was at getting in to University, and why wouldn't I? I had good grades*, a shedload of work experience, a strong personal statement. I felt like, compared with other people I knew of, I wanted it so much more; I felt so passionate about my reasons for studying Medicine, my interest in becoming a doctor.

*On the subject of 'good grades' I came out of school ecstatically happy about my GCSE's. It came as a shock when I realised that my grades would just scrape in University requirements, some would've disregarded my application completely such as Birmingham. I had 5 A*s (in the core subjects) and 7 A grades.

Initially

I'm not going to lie, as much as I was expecting it, receiving the 'rejection' email from Bristol still made me cry. I felt awful; I'd let myself down. All I could think about was those hours and hours I'd spent in preparation; writing my UCAS statement, arranging and attening voluntary work and work experience, carefully reading and cutting out articles for my scrapbook, researching universities. Wasted. All that excitement.

Essentially there was little 'wrong' with my application; yes, I probably should've applied to other universities, given different answers to questions. It's just difficult to stand out when everybody else is equally brilliant.

The Plan

It's a simple one really; get a job. I'd have loved to go travelling - but it's finding somebody to go with, somewhere to go. And with Medicine you really need to be in the country to attend interviews, which could be any time from November until April.

I'm hoping to find something in a healthcare/educational setting. Maybe a Teaching Assistant for SEN children, or a nursing auxiliary, or a health care assistant, or a care assistant in a nursing home.

I've started looking and applying, but it's difficult to judge the time frame at the moment.

Opportunities

After the initial 'oh, so did you not get your grades then?' people seem quite understanding about my failure (I use that word sarcastically). Mostly, people seem very good at pointing out the positives. Jordan and my work colleagues cheered me straight up "but you'll have so much free time working a 9 - 5?!" said one. "Oh, I bet you'll be able to do loads of interesting things in your free time" offered another.

Which is true. Mostly I'm excited about joining a gym - I have no intention to lose weight; I want to get fit. I'd love to re-learn German or start afresh with Spanish. I'm keen to investigate my interests in cognition and mental disorders further. A few people suggesting I write a book, but I might interpret that as putting more effort into the blog.

Most of all I'll have a whole extra year to think about Medicine and really refine my reasons for wanting to study it. I'll be developing new clinical and non-clinical skills and awarenesses through work. I'll have time to read for pleasure. And the money to enjoy myself.

Overall, I'm beginning to quite look forward to a year out. Not exactly a year to 'discover myself', but a year to appreciate some of the things I've overlooked whilst I've been studying hard, my tendancy to be short-breathed after running a flight of stairs being one of them. I'm not going to pretend that the thought of re-applying, of attending more interviews and potentially ending up in the same position this time next year doesn't terrify me. But at least I have something to look forward to along the way.

Happy Easter =)

And as another aside- somebody this week asked what the 'point' of this blog is. I thought it was fairly obvious from the sub-title but please let me clarify; essentially I'm keen to support students into higher education (particularly science and healthcare subjects). This blog is somewhere public for my ramblings to be posted, where other applicants may glean something. Maybe an idea for a project, a book to read or just a new perspective on applying. And I also enjoy writing.

Limbo

You know how when you ask somebody if they'd like to hear the good news, or the bad news first, and they nearly always say 'bad news'?

It's like an inbuilt defence mechanism (not necessarily the Freudian type); by hearing something positive we may become overexcited and therefore more vulnerable to whatever 'bad' news is coming next. If we hear something unhappy first, well at least we haven't got our hopes up too much, and it may contrast so greatly with the previous nugget of information it seems even better than it really is. (After I wrote this I felt a little twinge of guilt; maybe my interest in Medicine is a real Freudian defence mechanism and I'd much rather be a psychologist. At least then I can electrocute people for 'science'...)

So today is the 31st March; tomorrow nearly every Medical place in the UK will be dished out. I say nearly because Bristol have opted for an 'extended interview window'; mind you, even that ends on April 15thish. And I still haven't heard anything from them...

The email they sent earlier in the month explained how they're basically a little bit behind and need some more time. Fair enough. Then listed the interview dates. Excellent, feeling a little hopeful. And said they'd be in touch soon. Fabulous.

Honestly, I thought that no admissions tutor would be mean enough to send applicants a list of interview dates without offering them one; but apparently not. On The Student Room's Bristol thread applicants are still reporting receiving rejections pre-interview.

Well, I don't want to speculate too much on what this means for me: no prizes for guessing my desired outcome. I was talking about it to mother last night, and came up with a bizarre analogy (which anyone who watched this week's Bang Goes The Theory will understand). Essentially it involves hanging upside down above a pool of water, with all your trust in factors outside of your control, waiting to fall in whist hoping to be the last person still clinging on.