New Month, New Term, New Changes

OK ... so its September already and I have no idea where the last few weeks have disappeared to (probably somewhere hot and sunny on vacation ... which is probably where my brain has gone too). Here in the Clearing office things have been madness; we have found ourselves inundated with applications and, for the first time ever, the University of Greenwich have closed clearing by the end of August. Fantastic news for us, but I fear it will be bad news for those who still don’t have a place.


What can I do now? I don’t have a place ...
Many of you may be in the situation of not having a place and having no idea where to go next. So, here are a few ideas and links to help you. If you have been unsuccessful, think about the reasons why, was it the grades that you have? Was it the quality of your personal statement? Was it the lack of volunteering or experience within the field? If any of these are the reasons – they can be worked on. Try doing a one year access course to improve the quality of your qualifications (www.ocn.org.uk), work on your personal statement – use how-to guides on UCAS (www.ucas.com), volunteer your time (www.volunteering.org.uk) or get some work experience or a job (www.work-experience.org) and finally if you still need someone to turn to, visit your local connexions adviser (www.connexions-direct.com) or check out government advise for young people at: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/YoungPeople/index.htm .


For those who are on the way ...
For those of you who are successful enough to hold a place at a university, congratulations. It has been much harder to actually gain a place at university this academic year and you have been lucky enough to be one of those who have made it through. Getting ready to start university is a pretty nerve-racking time, you need to prepare yourself for getting to the uni, be it travelling or moving out, making sure you have everything you need to start – pens, pads, books etc and going through the endless paper trail involved in administration for your place.
BUT, don’t be disheartened, there is light at the end of the tunnel. It’s nearly ....

FRESHERS WEEK!!!!
 
Fresher’s happens over the first week ... or two ... or three of university and consists of a series of events to welcome you to the university and to get to meet other people.

For what is going on at Greenwich, take a look at http://www.suug.co.uk/freshers2010/events/ to find out what’s going on.

Once again, congratulations to all of you successful applicants and welcome to the University of Greenwich!

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Blog time again, my my, this time of the week certainly comes around quickly. I have found myself having a generally uninteresting, uneventful life for the last week or so, but I have decided to write about the reason why it has been so rubbish as I have nothing better to write about.

The bain of my life this week is ... money!! Surprise, surprise, a student with money problems.

During my job as a CRS ambassador I often go out to schools and colleges and give presentations about student finance and budgeting. The problem is, I am very bad at following the useful information I am disseminating to all of them. So my blog this week is to tell you about my shameful over-spending and to hope that you do not follow in my footsteps and end up with no money.

All new students LOVE that first day of term when you get to your bank account and see that loan/grant money sat there waiting for you to spend it. Some people may have best part of £3000 at their disposal and with the addition of a student overdraft this figure could be even higher. So obviously with that amount of money just sat there, it would be rude to not spend it, just a little, the money would feel insulted right? Wrong, start as you mean to go on. By all means treat yourself to a few moving in gifts for your flat, a few nights out with your new friends and some gorgeous stationary and folders for your new education. But also be sensible and think ... “how long will my money actually last like this?” The answer is, not long at all. During the first term you will have trips home, birthdays, Halloween, fresher’s events and the all important Christmas and all the costs that go with it.

So as dull as it sounds (unless you’re a bit of an organisation junkie like Emily) you need to make a rough budget plan of outgoings and incomings. It doesn’t mean you have to have every penny accounted for, but do yourself a favour and plan a little bit.

In my second year, you would think I would have learnt from my mistakes and with more money coming in from regular work, things should have been much easier. WRONG. The problem is, once you allow yourself to become an addict, you cannot stop yourself. I will make a confession to the world right here, right now ... “My name is Bryony and I am a shopaholic!”

A few of the people I work with here now know just what a sorry state my finances are in and several are trying to help me, but I cannot stop spending. I know as I write this that Laura is going to kill me, but even as I had the last few pounds left on my credit card last week, I found myself buying something on Play.com (sorry, sorry, sorry, bad person, doesn’t listen to good Laura lol). The most important thing though, is that I recognise I have a problem and have asked for help.


So my pledge to you fellow bloggers is that I will no longer spend my money on things I do not need and I will come back to you a success within the next month or two. Leave your messages of support by all means to help motivate me. I CAN beat my addiction!!



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It’s the day before payday and everyone is looking at sales and online shops in preparation to have money to spend ... this is hard already ... argh!!! :’(

Working for the University in the Summer

During my summer months at uni, I don’t get to spend my time as a lazy student, tucked up in bed all day watching Jeremy Kyle and This Morning; instead, I spend mine on the top floor of the Queen Mary building in our Greenwich campus. I work as part of the Enquiry Unit staff and it is up to myself and my colleagues to deal with any calls that come in to our free phone telephone number. During the summer months our job gets extremely busy as we take on the mammoth task of ‘Clearing’. For those of you who don’t know, Clearing gives the chance for students who do not already hold a place at university to make a late application to those courses with spaces still available.

A day in the life of …. A Clearing officer
The main task for the teams during Clearing is to answer calls and try to solve enquiries. The things that we deal with could range from simply giving someone directions to the university, to fighting to get them a place on a course so that they can fulfil their dreams of attending university.

Some days we have a lot of fun and talk so extremely friendly people; these are usually the people that are most grateful for your help and hearing their happiness really helps us to get a sense of job satisfaction. There are many cases during Clearing where applicants are putting all of their hopes into an application and we will do everything we can to support them.

Obviously not every customer is a happy one and we do deal with some extremely difficult calls during our work in the summer where people are emotional and unhappy. But at the end of the day we are all experienced in customer service and do everything we can to turn the person’s unhappiness around and solve their problems to the best of our abilities.

During this time we also work in a team, which means that we can share a fantastic bank of knowledge among us. If an enquirer calls and wants an honest opinion about a certain course, then the chances are that someone in our office has done that course or a very similar one and we are able to transfer the call to them for a personal perspective and more information.

All of the staff that work during Clearing and also throughout the year in the Enquiry Unit are current students. This means that we not only know about the information given to us during training, but also personal insights that we have gathered along our journeys. We all come from a variety of backgrounds and have unique university experiences. You can read about many of us in the ‘Student Experience Blogs’ page. Our blogs are a new task for us at work. We wanted to pass on some of our experiences and advice to new and perspective students as we have first-hand experience at all aspects of university life.

The University of Greenwich also has an active Twitter account, which you can follow at @UniofGreenwich.