Student Hardship 2022 - How Was It For You?

[BoldonLad]

That's character building, and it should focus your mind on doing well at uni.

Having said that I'm visiting a factory that does exactly the same thing this morning.

Indeed. When I was at school (aged 14-15 I think), we were taken on a school visit to a local coal mine, including, to the coal face. I am sure we saw the "sanitised" version of coal mining, after all, headlines in the local press about school boys being buried in coal mines would not look good.

Sanitised or not, it certainly convinced me that I didn't want to be working down there, and, it bucked up my work rate for my "O" levels.

 

[icowden]

I am really amazed that all you have the details right down to amount and what you did including the cost of pint at the student bar. Kind of worried my memory does not extend that far.

If it helps, mine also doesn't. Mind you, I didn't drink until abut half way through my second year of Uni.
I *do* remember that Student Standby tickets could be as cheap as £5 and that we knew someone who could get the restricted view box for Les Miserables for £5.50 a seat!

 

[SpokeyDokey]

About time Universities switched to more home based learning?

With more people WFH it would be a good introduction to the workplace as well as cost saving.

 

[Bollo]

I was at Imperial doing Physics in the late '80s. I got half maintenance grant and Ma and Pa Bollo made up the rest, but even with London weighting it wasn't much more that £2k a year. South Kensington isn't the cheapest so most of that was taken up with accommodation costs, although we could still claim housing benefit. I lived with a lot of engineering students who all had sponsorship, so I felt the general skintness. I remember one particularly bad weekend waiting on the grant money to go in where I only had rice to eat. I had some shocking summer jobs as well, including working in an arcade (the worst) and a Turkish Delight factory.

I then went on to do a PhD elsewhere, which was probably where it went a bit wrong. In those days you were very much at the mercy of your supervisor's cunning research plans and their engagement. The alarm bells went off pretty quickly so I managed to switch to a project in the Applied Nuclear department at Birmingham. It wasn't great but I got my doctorate and then spent a few years post-doccing before I got tired of the short term contracts and moved into IT where the money and prospects were better. While it's nice to have the DR on the credit card and companies like to roll it out when you're doing any external engagement, I can't say it was 4+ years well-spent.

I met Mrs Dr B on our first day at Imperial, so that went well . She also did a (much better) PhD at Birmingham in the Solid State department, but then turned gamekeeper and shifted across to university administration. She's quite eminent now in her field. In her case a PhD is pretty much a condition of entry and definitely helps when dealing with the academics.

Bolletta has now just started a degree course in central London. Luckily we're in a position to completely fund it (course fees, accommodation and living expenses). I don't think she'll be having any rice-only weekends knowing her.

@Reynard I did a good chunk of my growing up living at RAF Uxbridge near Brunel and went to school very close to the campus (the posher one up Hillingdon Hill, not Greenway 😬 !). I didn't go on to the campus very much but was always fascinated by the legoland architecture. I think it was where they filmed some of the scenes for "A Clockwork Orange"?

 

[fossyant]

About time Universities switched to more home based learning?

With more people WFH it would be a good introduction to the workplace as well as cost saving.

Student's really do want the face to face and the 'Uni' life. We do have distance learning courses, that are clearly marketed as that, but the majority is still campus based - demand lead !

 

[Reynard]

I was at Imperial doing Physics in the late '80s. I got half maintenance grant and Ma and Pa Bollo made up the rest, but even with London weighting it wasn't much more that £2k a year. South Kensington isn't the cheapest so most of that was taken up with accommodation costs, although we could still claim housing benefit. I lived with a lot of engineering students who all had sponsorship, so I felt the general skintness. I remember one particularly bad weekend waiting on the grant money to go in where I only had rice to eat. I had some shocking summer jobs as well, including working in an arcade (the worst) and a Turkish Delight factory.

I then went on to do a PhD elsewhere, which was probably where it went a bit wrong. In those days you were very much at the mercy of your supervisor's cunning research plans and their engagement. The alarm bells went off pretty quickly so I managed to switch to a project in the Applied Nuclear department at Birmingham. It wasn't great but I got my doctorate and then spent a few years post-doccing before I got tired of the short term contracts and moved into IT where the money and prospects were better. While it's nice to have the DR on the credit card and companies like to roll it out when you're doing any external engagement, I can't say it was 4+ years well-spent.

I met Mrs Dr B on our first day at Imperial, so that went well . She also did a (much better) PhD at Birmingham in the Solid State department, but then turned gamekeeper and shifted across to university administration. She's quite eminent now in her field. In her case a PhD is pretty much a condition of entry and definitely helps when dealing with the academics.

Bolletta has now just started a degree course in central London. Luckily we're in a position to completely fund it (course fees, accommodation and living expenses). I don't think she'll be having any rice-only weekends knowing her.

@Reynard I did a good chunk of my growing up living at RAF Uxbridge near Brunel and went to school very close to the campus (the posher one up Hillingdon Hill, not Greenway 😬 !). I didn't go on to the campus very much but was always fascinated by the legoland architecture. I think it was where they filmed some of the scenes for "A Clockwork Orange"?

I did my PhD at Imperial. Lucky I was still commuting from the then Casa Reynard, so only had a short bus ride and a few stops on the tube. Really enjoyed my time there too, but yeah, South Ken was spendy, especially compared to Brunel...

Dunno about "A Clockwork Orange" but one of the episodes of "The Avengers" was filmed on the Uxbridge campus - most scenes around the computer center, the lecture center and the Mech Eng department's Howell Building.

I didn't end up in the field I'd intended - I actually fell into the photography and journalism quite by accident while still doing my PhD!

 

[SpokeyDokey]

Student's really do want the face to face and the 'Uni' life. We do have distance learning courses, that are clearly marketed as that, but the majority is still campus based - demand lead !

I hear ya.

I wonder why they want the 'Uni experience' when they could save an awful lot of money by studying from home.

 

[fossyant]

I hear ya.

I wonder why they want the 'Uni experience' when they could save an awful lot of money by studying from home.

Beer, nox and parties !

 

[oldwheels]

I hear ya.

I wonder why they want the 'Uni experience' when they could save an awful lot of money by studying from home.

There used to be a school of thought that the “ Uni experience” was of more value than the actual qualifications gained at the end. Interacting with other people and joining things like debating clubs is important and many Scottish politicians got their grounding in public speaking and debating at University of Glasgow is one example.

 

[SpokeyDokey]

There used to be a school of thought that the “ Uni experience” was of more value than the actual qualifications gained at the end. Interacting with other people and joining things like debating clubs is important and many Scottish politicians got their grounding in public speaking and debating at University of Glasgow is one example.

It’s strange this latter-day Uni malarkey.

In days of yor it was possible to have a conversation with someone who had been to a university and graduated and they actually sounded bright.

Doesn't always seem the case these days.

Maybe I just struggle chatting to youngsters, or maybe they just don't want to open up to someone who is old and "knows nothing". Who knows?

Just over 2 decades back I was involved at a fairly senior level with the graduate recruitment program of a well known large-format food retailer.

It was, on occasion, mind-boggling how flat-footed some candidates were answering questions that tested their awareness of the world around them ie the one in which they were going to work.

For sure there were some stellar, and very switched-on, applicants with a very fast chip speed. But some of the others...

 

[slowmotion]

It was OK. A pint of Adnams cost 13p at the college bar, twenty Rothmans were 26p....and I was young.

 

[wafter]

I really enjoyed Brunel - it was actually my first choice anyway, made on the basis of its good rep for science and engineering and the bonus was that it was within reasonable commuting distance from the then Casa Reynard. I ended up there for five years all told, and, for the most part, loved every minute. There were a few modules on my course I didn't enjoy, but they were mandatory for IMechE accreditation, so I just had to stick through it.

I didn't do the wrong A-levels (Pure & Applied Maths, Chemistry, Physics), but I was going through a tough time mentally and I didn't get the support I needed - but that's another story. Ergo I flubbed them badly because my heart wasn't in it, but got offered the place on the foundation year on the strength of the interview and personal statement. Also, I didn't get the right careers / further education advice at school - traditional girls public school, and girls don't go off to do mechanical engineering. Hey ho! I ended up with a 2:1 for my BEng, missed a first by a gnat's todger due to my fannying around on a management module and scraping a pass on the exam...

Mech Eng & Automotive Design here too. Went in with designs of being a race engineer, but found that dynamics and fluid mechanics weren't nearly as much my cup of tea as the stress analysis and materials tech side of things. The electrical modules we did were ok, I hated CAD and 3D CAD as I much preferred doing that the traditional way. Robotics and integrated manufacture weren't offered on the Mech Eng courses, nor were the more in-depth materials modules, which is why I stayed on to do the Masters. For my sins (AKA masters project), I ended up developing a full-chassis computer model for Reynard Cars to do stress analysis with - at that time, it was still very much a theoretical thing for them, so I proved it was possible, and with commercially available software to boot (ANSYS).

My PhD was in F1 crash testing, concentrating on materials selection for side impacts. I designed and developed a small-scale testing rig for one of the FIA crash test procedures that could be used on an Instron in a standard testing lab, and then proved it could provide valuable information to reduce the number of iterations needed during full scale testing. The full-scale testing needs to be done in specialist places like MIRA as opposed to being done in-house, so it's expensive and time consuming and not conducive to real experimentation. I should add, that having my favourite racing driver die in a preventable accident, driver safety is something that really matters to me.

I did end up in motorsport after all that, but as a photographer and journalist.

Glad to hear you had a better time than I did! It had the potential to be great, had the uni not ruined it through greed and mis-management - it would probably have been a lot different had I been more decisive and gone three years earlier straight after A-levels before the rot set in.

Sorry to hear about your A-level situation; I can identify to a point although left it until the final year of my degree to fall to bits. Our experiences of the foundation year sound very similar and I guess they're going to be especially receptive to the positives of "sub-optimal" situations as that's what the course is there to accommodate. Sorry to hear about the careers advice too; although I don't think that's too out of the ordinary and I suspect your direction was probably pretty unique amongst your peers - not that that's an excuse of course.

That's a shame about the loss of the first, however once you're out in the wider world (and doing something completely different ) it doesn't really matter. I was running at about that level for most of the course but it died off towards the end and tbh I was lucky to get out with anything given the state I was in; however I also got out with a solid (at least on paper) 2:1.

Interesting that you liked the stress and materials stuff; I found vehicle dynamics pretty interest along with the engine tech. Thermo was interesting but tbh really stretched my aptitude and I didn't find it particularly intuitive like some of the other stuff. I quite liked the CAD too as well as the FEA and CFD, mostly using the Solidworks range of software (which was good) - I think we did one project on Ansys. Both projects sound interesting and I bet Reynards especially were glad of having someone do all that work for them / open the door to a new approach.

Funny how you ended up doing something totally different after all that - are you still doing the photography? I had an interest in photojournalism but again was late to the party when everyone was jumping on the bandwagon thanks to digital and the value of old school photographers was really falling through the floor..

 

[Grant Fondo]

Anyone else get lured into a Lloyds student account in the 80's? The prospect of using a cashpoint outside of banking hours must have been the clincher

 

[Reynard]

Glad to hear you had a better time than I did! It had the potential to be great, had the uni not ruined it through greed and mis-management - it would probably have been a lot different had I been more decisive and gone three years earlier straight after A-levels before the rot set in.

Sorry to hear about your A-level situation; I can identify to a point although left it until the final year of my degree to fall to bits. Our experiences of the foundation year sound very similar and I guess they're going to be especially receptive to the positives of "sub-optimal" situations as that's what the course is there to accommodate. Sorry to hear about the careers advice too; although I don't think that's too out of the ordinary and I suspect your direction was probably pretty unique amongst your peers - not that that's an excuse of course.

Oddly, it was only when I hung around with like minded people at uni that I finally realised I wasn't weird or anything. That liking cars and motor racing was a perfectly normal thing to do, as was being a nerdy and bookish geek. Uni was as fun as school was not. Plus, it wasn't the done thing to talk about mental health in those days (1991 - 1993). Let's just say that sympathy and understanding wasn't forthcoming.

Interesting that you liked the stress and materials stuff; I found vehicle dynamics pretty interest along with the engine tech. Thermo was interesting but tbh really stretched my aptitude and I didn't find it particularly intuitive like some of the other stuff. I quite liked the CAD too as well as the FEA and CFD, mostly using the Solidworks range of software (which was good) - I think we did one project on Ansys. Both projects sound interesting and I bet Reynards especially were glad of having someone do all that work for them / open the door to a new approach.

I think my passion for motor racing safety had something to do with the affinity for the materials side of things. After Paul Warwick was killed at Oulton Park in 1991 in what, really, was a very preventable accident, I just wanted to make single seater racing cars stronger and safer. Back then (early 90s) fatalities were a regular thing, and how things have changed since. Every time I see a driver walking away from a big shunt, I'm proud to have done my little bit.

Funny how you ended up doing something totally different after all that - are you still doing the photography? I had an interest in photojournalism but again was late to the party when everyone was jumping on the bandwagon thanks to digital and the value of old school photographers was really falling through the floor..

No, I don't do the photography anymore - swine flu and its afters in late 2009 put pay to that unfortunately, although I still do some cat stuff for Cats Protection and the Siamese Cat Welfare Trust. Also done a bit of cat show media work, although these days you're much more likely to find me judging at cat shows than prowling the hall with a camera. Having said that, it was becoming more difficult towards the end of my stint when digital cameras became considerably cheaper, and so everyone then got one. Other than the magazines whose books i was on, a lot of the other stuff dried up as drivers preferred photos taken by their mates (for free) rather than ponying up for my skill and my time. Unless you're right out of the top drawer like Jeff Bloxham, Keith Sutton or Jakob Ebrey, it does become very challenging.

I switched to digital in June 2003, so very early in the general scheme of things. Basically, the maths of shooting film just wasn't stacking up, and then you're at the mercy of whoever is doing the processing. Plus digital is easier on the deadlines as most weeklies want their photos by tea time on the Monday to be ready for print on Tuesday / Wednesday.

 

[Chislenko]

I went to work at 15, bought my first house at 18, paid off by 24, not a qualification to my name but done very well.

I always feel it is a shame there isn't a degree in Common Sense at University!