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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to be hopping mad and upset for DS?

152 replies

robotcollision · 21/07/2021 18:15

Sorry this is long but I am so angry and upset on his behalf and have nowhere to vent.

DS2 (19 yrs old) has never had life easy. He has a very visible physical disability and an invisible one (HFA) which have given him more than his fair share of medical and social problems since birth. He had a truly awful first year at uni due to extreme isolation during Covid and some bullying.

The one thing that worked out for him was that he studied really hard and as a result got offered an exchange scholarship to a US uni for this coming year. The US uni was supposed to release a form to him in March that he needed before he was allowed to apply for his visa. He asked and asked for it. It was eventually released last week. He immediately spent 12 hours completing it and returned it to them.
They sent it back to him this week and he finally was able to apply for a visa. The visa interview date came through and it is two days too late for the cut off entry to his first semester at the US uni. (Term starts on Aug 19th. The latest day they will accept him is 3rd September. The visa interview means he can't possibly get to USA before 5th September at the earliest. We have phoned the Embassy - they can't and won't expedite it. The uni's delay in releasing the form effectively means they have jeopardised his entire study abroad year.

He now has no US uni, no one to share with at his UK uni as the friends he eventually made when he returned in the summer term have already got sorted for houses and his only option is to get an emergency accommodation back in the block where he was locked up alone and descending into severe depression last year.

I am so sad for him and so frustrated that there is nothing we can do to change the dates. And I am so so tired of him constantly putting such effort in to everything he does, from friendships to academic study, just to be perpetually knocked back.

Don't suppose any MNer has magical influence at US Embassy in London? Grin If not, this is just a vent at the ongoing injustice in his life. I feel like nature didn't give him the best start and he deserves a break at some point.

OP posts:
Boredmotherofone · 09/08/2021 22:07

@robotcollision Hi how's things? Any word from Dominic Raab??

robotcollision · 10/08/2021 01:59

Thank you for asking @Boredmotherofone. DS has just signed a contract on a flat in his home uni town. I have had so much to do dealing with my father's death and looking after my senile mother that I have barely seen him. I've been three hundred mikles away most of the summer since I started this post. He claims he genuinely doesn;t mind. He's excited for the year ahead.

But no, not a single person ever replied except one of Raab's team who just kept promising they'd be in touch but weren't. I'm particularly disgusted that the host uni never replied. Once this horrible summer is over, I will write to them, and make sure their Twitter and FB accounts have public letters of disgust at the way they;ve treated an invited scholar. But right now I'm just glad DS has found some people he likes who like him, to live with next year. And the flat they have is gorgeous, apparently.

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