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Feeling powerless

4 replies

tobee · 20/12/2016 17:28

So... dd just found out she failed her year abroad for degree in mfl. She has "borderline" aspergers and, amongst other things, this mostly manifests itself in social anxiety and terrible organisation. She had to apply to do the year abroad and had a choice between teaching assistant, attending a university abroad or work o. Industry. She missed the deadline to apply to be a teaching assistant and just randomly chose a university. The universities all promote the year abroad as a fantastic time but she got very, very little support it seems. None whatsoever at the host uni and not much from her home uni. She relied entirely on emotional support from me and dh. If she'd done the teaching assistant she could have taught in English for 12 hours a week and then submitted a project. As it was she had to attend lectures and seminars with native speakers in the foreign language and do exams with little warning with seemingly no proviso for her not being native. So yesterday she was told she hadn't got enough marks from these exams and had consequently failed. She is now able to graduate for a differently titled degree with a Mickey Mouse sounding name. She hated the year abroad and the only thing I can do is say how amazing she is for sticking it out when she felt that way (which is true). These fucking universities take thousands of pounds from naive youngsters and can't be bothered to provide support. Why didn't someone guide her to do her application better? She was (unusually) uncommunicative with me at that time. She seems pretty stoical considering and it's her life but I can't do anything about it to complain on her behalf because she's 21. She's just not got enough confidence to appeal herself. She sent back an email to her university to day she understands and accepts this. I'm just so cross - the choice between teaching assistant and attending university seem entirely without comparison. . Just had to vent.

OP posts:
tobee · 20/12/2016 17:30

P.s she was very suited to do the teaching assistant option as we had discussed ages ago,

OP posts:
PolterGooseFat · 20/12/2016 19:50

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Message withdrawn at poster's request.

tobee · 20/12/2016 20:20

Thanks for your lovely reply. I agree with what you say (and I think so does dd) about proper diagnosis. When she was going through secondary education we were quite ignorant of the benefits of diagnosis and sort of took the view (wrongly, I now know with hindsight) that she didn't want to be further made to feel to different and didn't pursue things as officially as we could have done. I spoke to her university's SEN people at her original open day and they seemed reassuring and university did an ed psych test when in her first term but that ended up mainly just giving her extra time for exams. I feel that those in most need of support are the ones that don't ask. Extremely fortunately dd does not appear to suffer from depression atm but what about those that do? It might be too late for dd but there will be many that follow who also won't have adequate support.

OP posts:
PolterGooseFat · 20/12/2016 20:42

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

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