University disappointment

[SnowCrab]

I am struggling to deal with the cruelty of young adults. My fresher daughter’s roommates have all sorted out private housing for next year and not included her in plans. The only one out of a floor of 14/15 kids. I don’t think it was malicious just general privilege / obliviousness. My sweet caring daughter is just very sad and getting on with it.. I am full of rage. I want everyone to know about these selfish kids. I want their parents to know they brought up cruel children. Clearly that won’t happen. I sit here wanting them to now fail in life for the choice they made here (over reaction? Maybe). I am sure time will help. Has anyone else had this happen. How do I deal with this rage and move on?

You're absolutely right, but I'm not sure what the solution is. Lots of universities have tried running "don't rent yet" type campaigns to encourage students not to rush into anything, but it seems that collective panic sets in and they all buy into the messages which are deliberately put out by letting agents, which convince them that all the best properties will be gone if they don't sign up quickly. I saw my own dd get swept up in this, though thankfully she chose her housemates wisely!

My DS moved back onto campus for his third year and really enjoyed it. He didn’t stay in halls but in a house with his friend and 2 other third years.

Sounds like your DD and her friends have the measure of her. DD1 was in a large flat in first year and they split into a few groups to share a house. They ignored their instincts about one of their flatmates and included them in their group to be kind and she did turn out to be a nightmare to live with.

It's horrible when you feel your child is being left out. There is also an insane amount of pressure on the kids to find a group to live with and then they all panic and rush into arrangements with anyone just so that they are not the ones left out. Quite frequently it ends up being a mistake.

I can see how hurt she must be feeling though.

Try to get her to take a beat and just focus on the fact that there is actually plenty of time. There will be various groups of people whose arrangements change. People drop out/fail exams/change friendship groups etc a lot between now and the end of the year/start of next year.

We are about to launch into this with DS2. He's in a university where there is actually a lot of accommodation but they all still rush into it. They had a good sociable group on their corridor of 12 but one boy is causing significant issues for everyone by throwing regular tantrums and creating a horrible atmosphere. As a result everyone is feeling tense and avoiding being at home and they are all fragmenting.

These are the sorts of things they have to learn to navigate though.

Dd rented a room with two strangers in her last year such was the shit show of sharing with ‘friends’ in second year. It was the best year she had at Uni. Whilst I understand it is hard you need to calm down and get some perspective here, not nice bit not the end of the world.

I have a daughter in the first year of uni at the moment so I really empathise. She will be fine. She just hasn’t found her people yet but she will get there. You’ve also got to think what if she had moved in with them and it wasn’t a good fit. She would have been trapped. My Daughters flat is currently looking for accommodation and my daughter asked the girl in the next flat to come in with them as she recognised she had been excluded by her flat mates whereas a girl in her flat has decided to move in with some girls in an upstairs flat because they are more aligned. Try not to take it too personally as difficult as it is.

I only kept in touch with a few people from halls after 1st year. That didn't mean they were cruel they just weren't people I instantly became friends with or would have enjoyed choosing to live with. I'm quite shy with new people and was from a very rural location so took me longer to get used to living in a city and I had to work to fund myself so wasn't part of all the nights out. I lived in a shared flat off campus in 2nd and 3rd year which I preferred not everyone is suited to halls

It's common for friendships to evolve during university as people change, discover shared interests with new groups, and generally figure out where they fit in best This experience, often referred to as a social "cull," can be driven by a number of factors:
In the second year, students might find they have more in common with coursemates from their specific degree program than with the people they initially met in general first-year accommodation. Sometimes the "discarding" is less about the other people and more about the user moving away from unfulfilling relationships they settled for in their first year.

As a mature student I found that my experience changed in this way. I hung out much more with the postgrads and the lecturers than my fellow undergraduates.

DD has been told by her university NOT to book accommodation for next year until after Christmas and that there is often still plenty available well into the year. Although I assume that will depend on where you are.

She needs to find some friends from other interest, ie her course or clubs. Who your allocated to live with is totally random and they may have no shared interest at all.

I feel your pain OP. But like the other (nice) PPs I think the message to be telling your DD is "this is an opportunity not a disadvantage" and "this means you don't have to be stuck with these people the univ randomly assigned you for more than one year" and "you have time to find something else don't worry".
I love the idea of houseshare speed dating mentioned by @tripleginandtonic - this seems a good example of a univ trying to do something positive in this crazy housing market.

I don't think my DD had made friends with her current housemates until after this point in the first term. There's time yet to find her tribe. It would be a shame to be signed up for a house with a group who only invited her so as not to leave her out, and then miss out on signing up with friends she gets to know a bit later. And friendships will continue to shift. One of DD's housemates has already signed with different people for next year, but that has been achieved without anyone taking offence, and they're happy with where they are for this year. In contrast, there are other groups who fall out before they even start living together.

It's worth her bringing up the subject of housing for next year when getting to know people - if they're in the same boat, they will then be prompted to think "would I like to share with this person". They would be foolish to say straight away "oh, come in with us", but they might invest a bit more in getting to know her, or they may come back to her a bit later saying "we need a fifth person". And she should also make sure she's sure about them before saying yes!

Something like that happened to me, but I have to say that it was probably because I was not proactive in looking for people to share with, and/or hadn't made such good friends by that point of the first year that it was obvious I would share with them. Either way it was nothing to do with the students who sorted themselves out accommodation being nasty or selfish! I hope you don't really mean that.
I made some good and lasting friends as time went on, but not as many as some other students. Some people are more gregarious than others.

We did this to someone when I was at uni and she threw a massive fit. We didn’t invite her to live with us because we didn’t like her and she was always spreading lies about people. She was a bitch!

Maybe they just don’t like your daughter. That is allowed. They are adults. None are able to be forced to live with someone they don’t want to live with.

I’m really confused by your post @SnowCrab
did they all agree to live together then leave her out or just do the traditional student thing of sorting accommodation with friends/course mates and some flat mates as there’s no way 14 are living together in a private student rental.
it sounds like they have each sorted themselves out and your dd hasn’t and now finds she’s in a bind.
if they all excluded her that’s definitely not kind but she needs to sort herself with her new friends like everyone else does not sit back and do nothing then complain others have been pro active.

This is nothing new - I was at university in the late 90s, in halls in first year and we had to decide on 2nd year housing well before Christmas of first year.

Yes it was awkward at first but we were a floor of 14 and had got to know each other pretty well in the first couple of months.

That said this does seem VERY early.

@MigGirl Yes there’s always some available - mega expensive or manky. After Christmas is what the accommodations officers always say but they aren’t in the scrum.

You show a worrying amount of rage towards kids who you've even admitted you don't actually think are trying to hurt your daughter!

Lots are still looking for their housemates it's early days yet. She needs to join a few clubs and ask around. If she doesn't fit in with them it's for the best.

If there's 15 on the floor, then I'd guess around 4 houses. So unless they all sat round and decided "you three together", "you lot together", then presumably they probably all thought she was in with others.

It's not the same as a group of 6 on the floor making a flat with 5.

And it may actually mean that she's quite popular. So they all assumed that she would be with the others. She's not #1 on anyone's list, but she may be 4-5 on most. Or she's spending more time outside the flat so they assumed she would have got flatmates from elsewhere.

She's more likely to find people she really gets on well with if she looks outside that group too.

Yes, my daughter had her best year sharing with strangers when she did her placement year and had no choice. They were all strangers to each other and it worked so well (in this instance).

I would look around different floors and on her course. Who does she go for coffee with? Who has she met at events in the hall? My DD wasn’t included in a group of 4 who bonded in her shared flat/hall. They came from the same area of the uk and recruited a school friend instead of DD for a flat of 5. The other girl wanted to live with Chinese girls so didn’t need dd. So fair enough. DD found another group of 5 who wanted no 6 and she did the legwork in finding the flat. Still friends with most of them years later.

Bit of an aside but do people now consider local universities which are commendable so their children stay at home for uni?.if a child is working or on a degree apprenticeship they probably would be staying with parents saving for a deposit so it brings into question why leave home, pay a fortune in rent, have the stress of finding a house share and potentially having a miserable time effectively living in a home with multiple occupation with maybe unpleasant characters?

I don't think it is limiting in terms of experience to not house share and it is more comfortable to remain at home with a better studying environment?

‘I want them to fail in life’ is a horrible thing to say about young adults. I think you’re the cruel one.

what they are loosing is

• budgeting. As in proper budgeting.if you stay at home and mess up, you’re not going to wonder how you’re going to eat for the next week or two.
• making your own decisions - like how to live, when to eat, what to eat etc etc. Instead you stay within the template your parents have given you.
• organisation. As in thinking about everything from whether it’s worth taking your own utilities rather than paying through the landlord, to thinking about doing the shopping etc etc with no ‘safety net’. If you forget to shop, There’s nothing in the cupboard time of things. Or if you forget to buy washing powder etc etc…
• having to live with different people. Somethimg essential imo because it helps broadening minds so much. And realising your own privilege as well as realising how much privilege other people might have. All of, hopefully, learning to judge people diwn from that.

Thats just a few of the things my dcs have done at Uni, exierience theyd never get if they had stayed at home, going to our local Uni. Yes theres a price for that. But what theyre learning living in their own is also very valuable. (And I’m going to say, esp for men who get a flavour of carrying the mental load, cooking, cleaning etc….). I know my own dcs have hugely benefitted from that.