To feel really sad about this? 😥

[25carrotgold]

So I started University in the September before covid started. We had the first semester as normal and then obviously the second semester was cut short because of covid.

Ever since then, lectures have been online. We were lucky that when University started again in September we were able to go in for the occasional practical or lab, unlike other courses, but it’s not the same as being in all the time. We only see a very small number of coursemates who are in our groups, and apart from that we don’t really know the rest of our year as we barely had 2 semesters to get to know everyone before covid started.

I have a nice group of friends and know of most of my coursemates through our course group chat, but it’s not the same really. Part of going to university is meeting lots of new people, nights out, going for lunch after classes, studying in the library and hanging out. It’s the social side that’s completely missing. All the clubs and societies were restricted or stopped if they couldn’t be run. And since they’ve been off for a few years, there’s no new members to take over so a lot of clubs won’t start up again for a while.

its just all the little things like that that add up to the ‘university experience’ and I feel so sad that it hasn’t happened- going in for 2 hours a week for a class just isn’t the same.

in some ways it has been better having lectures online- it’s easier to take notes, more time to work and do sports, less money and time commuting to Uni, but it would be nice to have a normal year now before we finish. We are going into our last year and my friends have apparently been told that lectures will remain online again this year- we will have more in-person tutorials and practical classes so it’s not terrible, but I was really hoping for a year of normal university experiences.

I know that the University are trying their best and it’s not their fault, and with covid spreading again it will be trickier still, but I just feel so sad about it all. Just needed to get this off my chest, sorry not really an AIBU.

Definitely not been unreasonable imo. If someone wanted that university experience, they would have chosen the Open University.

If the future of University is going to distance learning and mostly online - I wonder if they will review tuition fees? (Obviously that's a joke, because clearly they wont)

Very poor on the uni’s part. But surely the ones keeping lectures online will pay the price with applications. Who will want to apply to somewhere where the course is all online?

My eldest started uni in September 2019, he was 17 so didn’t get to join in with the usual freshers week. He turned 18 at Christmas and 8 weeks later uni went online and then into lockdown the next month! He hasn’t had a normal uni experience and doesn’t have any uni friends as hadn’t had the chance.

hoping for some normality for his last year at uni.

DNBU, feel sad for you all.

OP,

Next year you will have a chance to feed this back where it has an impact, in the National Student Survey (NSS) of final year students, run by the Office for Students with results published on their website.

I realise it will be too late for you, but as people are pointing out, this particular issue is symptomatic of a larger problem that will continue beyond the pandemic unless changes are made.

No you are not unreasonable. My son tried to go to Uni in 2020 and had a year of online lectures and spent a lot of time locked in his student block during lockdown. He was unengaged, he never met anyone on his course, and started to oversleep and miss his lectures. Ended up failing. I think his life would have been a whole different story if lockdown hadn’t happened. I’m feeling pain for him that he missed out on the experience I had - and also that he has still come out of it with no degree, yet has run up student debt, which I didn’t have to suffer.