Fighting our way through 1st year uni (starting Sept 17)

[HSMMaCM]

Continuing the previous thread.

Exams, assessments, essays, etc.

Support, or lack of it.

Will they all get accommodation for next year and can they cook a balanced meal yet.

No, the Catholic was not Bristol. I remember visiting some friends there and it was quiet.

The Times reports today that Bristol is planning to do what I've suggested for a while - that they seek consent from students to contact parents if the student is not showing up for lectures which is perfectly lawful under data protection law if you have the consent.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bristol-to-warn-parents-of-struggling-students-r5gsstsqw

"Bristol University will ask students to sign forms allowing staff to contact their parents if they are struggling to cope."

Xenia that is a little bit of good news.

Errol, from what my DD has told me, I'd say that article is fairly accurate. Rich students (of which there are many at Bristol) can afford expensive drugs.

I remember there being a lot of drugs around when I was at Bristol in the mid-1980s. There was also a huge Sloane Ranger culture - young Conservatives who spent inordinate amounts of time watching Newsnight and Channel 4 and having dinner parties and not taking drugs. But they have done unspeakable things to the UK ever since...

DS has a new plan for finding accommodation which is worrying me. 6 of his mates want to find a 5 bed house in Greenwich! 40 minutes from his uni. I thought Greenwich was quite a posh area? Two of his housemates are in a relationship so they would share a room. He thinks they will get somewhere for no more than £3,500 pm between them.

My only input is to say that the bigger the group the more difficult it will be to find somewhere? Haven't mentioned that if the couple split up and one of them moves out the rent will then have to be split 5 ways instead of six.

Exam on 6th June. Applications for grants from charitable trust funds due in by 6th june. He has agreed to accompany 14 students in their exams! Gig in derby next week. Girlfriend going to spend a few days with him next week too, so likely no sleep. He has two enormous ulcers on his tonsils. Argh.

40 minutes seems a bit far. I think they should try to look closer to the university if they can but I suppose they need to take their own decisions.

I agree Xenia. Especially as his instrument if the double bass.

Rogue, Greenwich is quite MC mostly. £3500 Sounds about right for a 4 bed house in our bit of zone 2 SE London - maybe slightly cheaper in Greenwich?
40mins is a long commute for a student and could be worse if transport delays.

Accompanying 14 students! And 40 minute journey with a double bass!

My DD will struggle with her half hour journey with a pen and phone .

About time I showed my face in time for the end of year 1 I thought :-)

People I know at the university tell me it's pretty much divided with state and private school pupils as they tend to choose different accommodation with the older, more traditional halls being favoured with the private school set and the more modern halls like the Unite ones being favoured by the state school pupils. Some people I know living in Wills don't know any state school pupils and it's the same with Unite and private school pupils.

Hugh Brady is a medical doctor and has three university aged sons; to my my mind that makes the cuts they are planning to mental health provision for students even worse. It's not like Bristol isn't a wealthy university.

@HSMMaCM that's good about your DD's exam. I hope it helps.

Like BTM I've heard that the senior residents are good, one that I've heard of has provided support which has meant that a student hasn't quit university despite a lot of MH problems and is coming back next year. I don't know which hall he was in but he's in a very new one. They need to keep them and need to provide a good support service with professionals as well. BTM, thank goodness that they knew that your daughter wasn't involved. Like others have said, imagine if it was a law or medical student in a flat with drug takers or dealers.

My own student is very, very fortunate - there are just four flats on her floor and they are separated by the stairs and are as far away from each other as it is possible to get. It's very quiet, apart from the noise of the city anyway. When home, she's sitting in the garden all the time to hear the birds - she's a country girl at heart yet lives in the middle of a city for now. She's moving to the sticks next year.

Horsemad, hows the accommodation search going?

rogue, I rent a four bed house with a living room and a large kitchen for £2,200 in a nice residential street in Greenwich near the park and 5 minutes walk to the station to four sharers, so it is doable. However though 6 students might opt to share one room and forgo the living room I could not allow this, even if they paid me more. Greenwich property licensing is possibly the strictest in the country and they run surprise inspections. Which means, obviously, they also have a large number of unlicensed rental properties, where landlords have decided to stay well away from the Council's byzantine, expensive and lengthy process. Most will be fine. So the proposed rent should be doable. And if they are near a station it will soon be a short hop to Woolwich and Cross-rail. It is also generally safe.

40 minutes is often considered the upper limit for London pupils to commute to secondary school, though both DCs state offers, to schools they had not listed, were considerably more than this. DD had a 40 minute commute, with lots of bags. It worked but she was very relieved to switch to somewhere within walking distance at sixth form. It also adds to the expense.

Errol, the article reflects what I am hearing. The level of drug use and the type of drugs is shocking. And observation is that the assumption that the problem is mainly rich private school kids is facile. I would argue that private school kids have generally had better opportunities to divide themselves into tribes before starting University: party (though these will then often opt for "party universities); sporty; arty (drama/art/music); swotty, and the latter three groups are perhaps better equipped to find their people and ignore the peer pressure. The country lines problem www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-44127068 is everywhere and many kids starting university will have far more exposure to hard drugs than we ever did, and see their use as normal. Heavy drug use is pretty incompatable with studying and so it is not surprising that many find themselves lost and directionless.

I have been talking to quite a few present and ex students from different universities recently about their views on the problems at Bristol. The ones who had studied at well know London universities say that generally pastoral care structure is as deficient if not more so at these universities than Bristol. Their consensus opinion is that Bristol has a particularly bad drug problem that fuels both the MH and pastoral issues.
IMO the senior management of many universities pay lip service to pastoral care structures including whether these are effectively managed.

When halls have a welfare team it depends on the individuals; their training and experience is likely to be lacking particularly when students are used.

There is a balance to be had between rules at school and freedom whilst accumulating experience at university but neither should it be potluck what safeguards are put in place for noise, drug taking and dispruptive partying through the night.

I fear that most of what is said by Bristol will continue to be for PR rather than effective change. If they do turn this around other similar universities should take note.

I fear that most of what is said by Bristol will continue to be for PR rather than effective change. If they do turn this around other similar universities should take note.

I kind of agree, however I hear that they are working together with UWE to come up with some solutions so perhaps at some level they do really want to change things for the sake of the students and not just PR. However, although UWE has tragically also had some suicides, I think the causes of the problems at UWE and UOB are likely to be very, very different. The demographic of the student population are very different I think.

It's endemic.

Friend's dd found Bristol difficult because of the level of cocaine use by the private school girls she flat-shared with, but there was also a cocaine problem in ds's state comp sixth form. Ds1 told me that ketamine use was so rife in his uni that one student hall is known as The Ket Tower. Ds2 told me last week that his friend had to give CPR to a flatmate who had overdosed (northern RG uni). They found him turning blue when they were debating whether to wake him up to join them on a night out . Thank god they decided to check on him and saved his life but ds told the story quite matter of factly as his friend had told him as though it was normal

I think the problem is that hard drug use has been normalised not just among students, but 'grownups' in society as a whole for want of a better word. the amount of jokes about it on TV, here on MN, even parents at the school gates viewing it as a joke or 'OK if it's just at weekends'. Then young vulnerable stressed students are lead to believe it's normal and that everyone does it. They wont seek counselling or MH support because they don't recognise it as a problem. I find it horrifying. I genuinely didn't ever see hard drugs or know of anyone who used them back in the day.

needmoresleep Many thanks for that info. I feel so clueless.

Cocaine use!

@Haffdonga that ranges from totally shocking to beyond words. It's horrific.

or am I clueless?

Haffdonga, that's awful.

I was with Bristol students at two halls yesterday and everyone I met seemed lovely and happy and normal and not intoxicated ( at both halls) - that is my sons' friends. In the hope no one on here will out us or that the boys lose their cool, if they have any cool, so many of those friends came to mmy sons' Catholic confirmation yesterday. It was just amazingly lovely. (My boys had already made first communion years ago, but unlike their siblings never done the final confirmation stage at age 14 so decided to do it in Bristol). Their friends all dressed up. We had had hymn requests from friends in advance even. They took photos before and after but not inside.They behaved so well in the mass (I was worried non- church goers might giggle, make it a photoshow etc). I saw no drugs (but I am not saying people don't take them at all universities and most schools of course) and people just looked so healthy and happy and young and fit.

We were in the hall grounds for a bit too and there were some girls revising in the sun. It was a really nice atmosphere. Some bedrooms were messy and one of my sons had old alcohol empty bottles in a bag in his room - he has decided when his exams are over there will be a big "going to the rubbish" exercise as a kind of end of exams. I even offered to pay the restaurant bill one group of one son's friends (with him) were going on to after, but not the alcohol, and when my son texted me the bill last night the alcohol on it was so small in price (I had imagined it would double the price!) I was more than happy to refund that too.

I don't take drugs and I don't smoke and I don't even drink so I suppose I don't have people talking to me about adults at school taking them, as Haff says above , but I know that lots of adults do (more fool them) and lots of students, as indeed do they drink too much too (see many MN threads). Nor am I complacent about the difficulties lots of students face. I was just so pleased we are nearing the end of the year and my lot seemed to be happy except the odd moan about difficult exams.

Now.... next stage the rest of the exams.

Xenia, that sounds lovely. Like an alternative Royal wedding.

My guess is that the drugs landscape has changed quite quickly. Ketamine and cocaine are now cheaper than alcohol and can be delivered quicker than a pizza. Lots of indicators, like the number of recent stabbings in London, younger kids being caught couriering drugs to rural towns, and the level of cocaine trace found in sewers (Bristol has the highest in Britain and the fourth highest in Europe).

Rapid University expansion and stretched services won't have helped. Nor does the design of modern student accomodation which puts up to a dozen 18 year old strangers together with no imposed boundaries.

The price drop has changed the stereotype. No longer rich girls snorting cocaine. Richer kids can afford the 10 before 10 bar crawls. less well off students on loans can afford the coke. One surprise for DD has been the lack of engagement. Students who don't seem to know why they are on their course, don't join societies, or play sport of music and who seem to have selected the University for the quality of its club scene. Oddly the coke snorting private school girlies are more protected as they will have existing social networks, plus parents who step in quickly. (A micro-trend amongst some of the heavier partying bright sixth formers DD knew is to avoid Bristol/Newcastle/Manchester etc. If you want to move on and achieve a better study/life balance, head elsewhere, say UCL or Durham.) Kids who don't attend lectures, dont join societies but are heading out four times a week with their new friends, not looking after themselves and getting into debt, have to be vulnerable.

The moment for me was when DD complained that because she was the only one who washed up, it was her crockery that was used for cutting ketamine. She started keeping everything in her room.

But that said, DD is also picking up a nice group of friends, in her case mainly from state schools and from across the country. University should start to be what she had origionally hoped it would be.

everyone I met seemed lovely and happy and normal and not intoxicated

Probably the majority are, most of the time.

A dozen random 18 year olds in a student flat with no supervision is a recipe for disaster. I wonder who on earth dreamed that concept up.

University pastoral care and MH services can not remedy structural Lord of the Flies scenarios!

Most of DDs first flat decided in November to share a large house together. To be fair most were fine, just not housetrained, a little immature, away from home for the first time and vulnerable to peer pressure. She is getting some small comfort from a couple of messages she has received, seeking her sympathy for the on-going problems within the flat, though she sees no point in replying. Assuming all pass their exams, and that the worst behaviours don't change, it is almost certain there will be a big bust up next year. Again students in this position will be vulnerable if they dont have other social networks, perhaps from their course or societies, to fall back on.

Because much of the private accomodation is in expensive residential areas the City is much hotter on noise within shared houses. Part of HMO licensing provisons has landlords responsible for anti-social behaviour by tenants. Three complaints by neighbours and the City apparently demands Landlords to do something. Pity they don't feel the need to protect students living in University accomodation in the same way. Or perhaps they might if asked.

Individual 18 year olds may be “just fine” albeit with the short comings you describe but the toxic mix is putting them all together with no rules/supervision/law enforcement.

Xenia that sounds a very enjoyable and reassuring time with your DSs.

University pastoral care and MH services can not remedy structural Lord of the Flies scenarios!
User I think student pastoral care includes supervision and boundaries in these halls and flats full of 18/19 year olds. Private halls should have similar.
It is making sure that a growing minority of students with repeated antisocial and illegal habits are not allowed to continue unchecked due to the increasing repercussions and stress their behaviour causes.

I agree with Needmoresleep that this is not simply due to the richer students being able to afford greater access to drugs as well as alcohol. . Seems likely that both a copycat behaviour and availability of loan funds contribute.

I was with Bristol students at two halls yesterday and everyone I met seemed lovely and happy and normal and not intoxicated ( at both halls)

That has been my experience as well, though I've only met a handful of students. My daughter's friends are much like her by all accounts and they all get on well as they have chosen to house share next year, she'll be living with all of the same people as this year.

When I have been to her halls I've seen a few flats with bottles lined up all along the windowsills so visible to the road, I assume they are keeping them all year and then disposing of them because where there were 1 or 2 there are now 20 plus.

Dd had her purse stolen at the gym this morning. Probably someone wanting money for drugs
Fortunately she didn't have any cash but lots of cards, railcard and Id, all of which need replacing, hassle she doesn't need just before exams