This isn’t the Bristol Uni experience I was promised, and I have had enough

Student satisfaction rating? 0/10 from me


I watched the Prime Minister’s announcement this week with eager eyes. I was hoping that he would finally address university students, and at least give us a sense of direction for the start of the year. Instead, we were completely ignored.

Students have been put through loops and hurdles. I have not received the same standard of education I was promised. The “blended learning” experience has ended up as a mushy mess.

Now the libraries are shut, and I am once again confined to my room miles away from home. I have now been hurled into exam season with multiple essays to write, with no consideration of the circumstances we find ourselves in being taken into account.

We have all been absolutely shafted. This isn’t the Bristol Uni experience I was promised, and I’ve had enough.

The university has failed to commit to the statements they made about maintaining a good quality experience. If I am paying £9,250 per year for my tuition fees, and teaching has moved completely online, then the university should at least buy my lecturer a suitable microphone. I can’t even hear what they are saying due to them having a bad mic or WiFi. This has had a direct impact on the quality of work I am able to produce, and my ability to engage in online seminars.

Especially as a social sciences student, I have up to three contact hours a week. I should be able to look forward to them. Instead, I continuously dread being put in awkward breakout rooms which are silent because nobody could hear what our seminar tutor said.

I should indeed be entitled to a refund. On top of this, there’s also the fact that students are paying thousands for accommodation they have been told they cannot return to unless they are doing an “essential course”. Wow, what a polite way of calling my degree useless.

Once they at least publicly acknowledge the fact that this year’s education hasn’t been anywhere near what previous years have had, then we may be able to rebuild our trust in both institutions. At the moment, I am completely disappointed and utterly fed up.

Freshers like myself have particularly had it rough. Our final day of school was a random day in March. We never got to say goodbye to people we had spent years with. Our exams were cancelled last minute. Many of our university plans were ruined with rogue calculated predictions. We have been continually blamed for the government’s blatant failures. It was therefore the icing on the cake that Johnson’s speech didn’t even glance over the word “university”. Talk about caring about us.

From the day I arrived at Bristol, security and police have made me feel like a criminal. It is not right that I am living in halls and have become used to the thought that security could burst in at any moment and question me. I thought that coming to university would be liberating, and yet instead I constantly feel like a burden on the community I live in just because I carry the label of “student”.

Bristol: We understand that you are struggling and you are trying your hardest. But it’s now time that you properly acknowledge that students have been failed, and own up to it. It’s not good enough to put up posters with @samaritanscharity phone number on them when the problems have an obvious source.

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