I've lived in Ashford my entire life; my parents are content to stay here. Personally, I want to see some of the world, to not be stuck in my hometown forever. When I began applying to universities, I chose four which were far from Kent - Liverpool, Hull, Bristol and Nottingham. As an International Baccalaureate student, I had only my GCSE grades and a couple of teacher statements to go upon. Needless to say, it wasn't enough and I received the four rejections within weeks. My UCAS tutor recommended that I take a look at biomedical science; my strengths are biology and languages, and I really didn't want to spend several years of studying to become a translator while Google can do the same thing in seconds.
My fifth choice was the University of Kent, the local university. I've been there several times, and my uncle works there as some sort of student adviser. Although I had wanted to move away, it seemed a good place to study and following the rejections, I was pleasantly surprised when I received the letter confirming the conditional offer. Around this time, I was hearing a lot of my friends talking about their universities giving 100% offers, but this was a big deal for me and I genuinely put in a lot of work at home. As exams approached, I spent countless hours going over notes, re-writing them, making posters and completing practice questions. Most of the time, I felt confident that I had done enough.
I received the results two months ago. I remember it to be a bright morning, though I had been up all night and just wanted to get everything over and done with. I left home without a word to my parents, arrived at the classroom barely speaking to anyone. Looking back, I was pretty certain that the results were bad. This wasn't the "Oh, I've done well all year, but it's probably all gone wrong!" feeling, but more of a "I've only concentrated at the end; my laziness has cost me the future" feeling. Opening the letter and finding out that I had passed, but not done enough to get the grades I needed for the UoK, was devastating. I lied about the results to someone and walked out, put some music on and threw away the paper. A short call to my parents to confirm the bad news, and then I walked home and went to bed.
"Disappointed, but not surprised" was the phrase that I used the most when family and friends asked me about the IB. Probably the most honest statement to describe how I felt that day. I'd put all of my effort into the exams and into that one lifeline, yet I had never considered the alternatives. What could I possibly do now? I'd received my fifth and final rejection, and felt worthless. There were a few options available. The first would be to re-take the year and attempt to get better grades. A friend of mine, Ben, did the same thing and although I often joked about it, I have to admit that it would take a lot of guts to do that. I didn't enjoy the thought of going through another year of the IB, let alone with a whole new group of strangers. I know some people are taking a gap year, though coming from a lower-income family ruled that one out. It may seem a bit absurd, but I took the idea of studying abroad quite seriously. A passable knowledge of French, and relatives in Poitiers and Montreal meant that was a possibility. My twin cousins, Thomas and Etienne (the French equivalent of Stephen apparently...), did the same thing before one of them moved to Japan.
As you can probably tell by the long paragraph, my head was all over the place. I've never been in a situation where my life is changing so rapidly, and I've had the control to direct it. My family said that they would support me in any decision, though what I really needed was advice; someone who would actually give their opinion on the matter for me to contemplate. I'm glad that I went to see the Head of Sixth Form at our school as she gave me some motivation not to give up. I know I wasn't alone in the situation; many others had under-achieved. Having seen the news recently, I guess if there's one thing our generation is good at, it's under-achieving. She recommended that I be persistent, that I keep contacting universities and try to get into the biomedical course that I was interested in. After contacting a couple more, I finally had the reply I sought after - an unconditional offer to study at Sunderland.
I was delighted to be accepted to study at Sunderland. I'm not sure if anyone's admitted to that before, but after the turmoil of the UCAS process, a conclusion was welcome. Of course, it was about half an hour after telling my parents, who were on holiday at the time, that I realised something rather obvious - I had no idea where Sunderland is. A quick search on Google, and I found out that it's in Tyne-Upon-Wear, almost 6 hours and 340 miles away. I wanted to get far away from my hometown, but not that far away. In fact, beyond the entry requirements, I had not even checked out the campus online, or what the city was like. The only thing I knew about Sunderland was that they had a top-division football team playing at the Stadium of Light, and that they have a rivalry with Newcastle. Hardly ideal.
Since that day in August, over a month since my horrific results, I've been enjoying the sudden rush to prepare. Student Finance was one of the main things to be sorted. As I've mentioned, coming from a low-income family and aspiring to go to university, especially with the tuition fees increased, is less than ideal. However, one of the welcome bonuses from going to Sunderland is the lower rent; it's much much cheaper to live in the North than the South. I spent an afternoon planning a year-long budget and it turns out that I won't need to get a part-time job to pay for food or rent.
Talking of rent, I sorted my accommodation very quickly after being confirmed. I'm going to be staying at a place called the Forge. It's a privately-run student village for about 500 students, endorsed by the university. The rule-book and contract took forever to read through and sign, but I was accepted there by default thanks to being a first year student. Apparently, I'll be sharing a flat with 3 guys and 3 girls. I'm sure we'll all get along just fine, but I'm feeling a little apprehensive about having 7 people, including 3 girls, all vying for bathroom time in the morning.
With the travel, course, money and accommodation all sorted out, there is only one thing left that really bothers me; Sunderland itself. I've never been that far north, let alone visit Sunderland. So I spent £5 on a map, applied for free student travel, and read the Wikipedia page. I know all of my flatmates will be first year students as well, so we can get lost together, no problem :) I also found out that the people of Sunderland are known as Mackems, not Geordies (as the 3rd entry of the Urban Dictionary clearly describes).
So, all that's left for me to do now is wait. Last week I celebrated my 19th birthday with a small group of friends and family that also doubled as a going-away party. Everyone seemed really supportive. It's going to be a little weird not seeing familiar faces for months at a time, but it's going to be great to meet new ones.
The paragraphs are getting shorter - less to say I guess, though writing at four in the morning pobably doesn't help . I leave at 9am on Sunday 16th, with Fresher's Week beginning the next day. I hope to keep the blog up-to-date with posts about my time there, what the city and the course is like. I've already promised myself to watch the Man United/Sunderland match in March and take some pictures. Thanks for reading this far (if you have), and see you next time ;)
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