University accommodation. Why is it so shit? I lived in a self catered hall for a year with an oven that didn't work. I had to share a bathroom with 10 people. And it cost me more money than living in a rented house with housmates.
>>15108 Back when I started I was told I had been assigned to University Hall in my first year. Naturally I assumed this meant it would at least be somewhere near the university, as opposed to the 45 minute walk it actually was.
>>15116 I'd have thought it natural to exercise due diligence when it comes to selecting your accommodation for the next year or three (insofar as you have a say). I'd not just seek information from the uni but I'd visit candidate halls to get a feel for the buildings and their location. But that's just me apparently.
>>15121 >I'd have thought it natural to exercise due diligence when it comes to selecting your accommodation for the next year or three (insofar as you have a say).
As I said, "assigned".
>>15122 I did specifically acknowledge that in my post. You also suggested this came as a surprise to you. Had you known you could have made a more informed decision about which university you wanted to go to or you could have attempted to influence the residency team.
>>15108 Mine is alright, post-grad accommodation, not worth a penny for what it is - but it's close to work and in a nice area.
One thing that is ludicrous, is despite paying £ 113 pw - there is no fucking washing machine. All we have a is a shared one that requires you to use a top up card that takes minimum £ 5 transactions via a registered internet website. And to make matters worse, it's £ 2.60 per fucking wash, so you can't even get two decent ones per top-up, the scrounging cunts. I've also noticed my washing comes out half-done, or not done at all - and all complaining does is make the bitches at the reception give me the number to the fucking company, with no refunds! Lunacy!
The feel of the place makes me want to leave ASAP, it's like living on a hospital ward, with those self-closing doors, awful decor and poorly designed kitchens and bathrooms. Walls are legitimately wafer thin and you can hear every burp and fart.
One really intriguing story I have was when I first moved in, the ethernet didn't work. So I opened up the little box the plug is set in and I find a folded up bit of paper. I open it up and it's a page from a porno, it felt like some kind of time caspsule emergency wank fodder in case the internet put out.
I only recommend it for someone who is here short-term, otherwise look for a studio apartment for the same price.
>>15123 >you could have attempted to influence the residency team.
Your opportunity to "influence the residency team" is the allocation form. If they go and stick you in the place you ranked last, there's not really anything you can do about it.
>>15126 This is the only reason why I chose the aforementioned post-grad accommodation, I was coming back from overseas and I needed something quickly.
>it cost me more money than living in a rented house with housmates.
Yes, it did.
Uni accommodation is shit because people like you put up with it. If you all started moving off-campus en masse they'd sort their act out, but you don't, do you? Instead you moan about it on an anonymous imageboard, or in the union over a pint of snakebite and black, but you don't actually do anything.
Between this thread and the other one in /101/ I'm beginning to think the student posters here are a bit fucking picky, too. You had to share a bathroom? The provided washing machine wasn't to your satisfaction? Boo fucking hoo.
>>15157 I wish I lived in Broadgate for my first year. I was a bit put off by it not being on campus (didn't realise until I got to uni that it was only over the road from campus) so opted for catered. Fucking awful experience. No cooking facilities, full of rarara cunts setting off fire alarms as pranks at least once a week.
>>15159 I think people are willing to pay the premium to live in uni accommodation for the experience, particularly in first year. It's probably easier to make friends and have more fun nights if you're living with 250 fellow freshers right in the heart of campus, than if you're living with strangers in a house in the suburbs. Also as most people who go to uni tend to be living away from home, it's more convenient to live in halls than go hunting for housemates in an area that's new to you.
Though after first year, I can't see the appeal of halls at all. Having to pay a premium for internet content blocks, the 4 washing machines between 250 people, and lack of cooking facilities doesn't appeal to me.
>>15159 >Uni accommodation is shit because people like you put up with it. If you all started moving off-campus en masse they'd sort their act out, but you don't, do you?
It's obvious you never lived in one.
First off, for international students and student that live far away from their intended campus, it's not always possible to view their future accommodation, flatmates and amenities. It's usually a case of forking over a large sum of money comprised of the first term's rent plus deposit before any of that happens.
You can't just "leave" either as you're tied to a year minimum contract - and leaving would require someone to sublet your place which just doesn't happen.
>the student posters here are a bit fucking picky, too. You had to share a bathroom? The provided washing machine wasn't to your satisfaction? Boo fucking hoo.
I'm done with my student young lad days, and when you gain that bit of maturity, you also want independence and privacy. So sharing a bathroom with 8 others doesn't exactly appeal to me - especially if they're filthy fuckers, and especially if no one actually cleans up after themselves. The last thing I need is to argue with some prick about who left the huge turd stain in the toilet, or which lass' hair is clogging up the drain. After looking the other way and just cleaning up after them - you just get sick of it and settle for squalor. This is awfully depressing as I mentioned you're tied to living in one place for at least a year.
As for the washing machine, I paid a lot of money to live where I do, and it's amazing they'd resort to this sort of method. Everyone needs their clothes washed, and funnelling them through such an extortionate system is just cuntish.
Get off your high horse granddad, these aren't the 50's anymore.
Raleigh Park is alright, fairly quiet for the most part, but where I live there is always some cunt that will honk their horn early in the morning or late at night for their friends.
>>15162 Charging for washing machines fucks me right off. In halls it was £2.00 per wash, and about £1.60 to tumble dry. 4 of each, 250 students, and invariably they'd all be full of the clothes of people too lazy to take their stuff out once the cycle is finished. And they were shit, as there were pretty good odds that it wouldn't wash things properly.
>>15163 Aye, living in a rented house though as I'm past wanting the halls experience. I think most of the self-catered halls are meant to be decent, as the loud Karnikunts are attracted to the catered halls on campus. Though got to say, not a fan of Raleigh Park's location. Radford terrifies me. But I guess if you're based on Jubilee, it's well situated.
>>15164 The location is totally fine. In fact it has a lot of good amenities in the area and it's close to the city. Radford itself is somewhat of an anomaly, everyone who doesn't live here is ok with it - and everyone outside of it claims its some kind of gang land.
It's pretty decent for the most (during the day), the old buildings have a lot of character and there are some shops and other things. I don't hang around there too long as the packs of bongos and muslamics scare me.
>>15165 >Radford itself is somewhat of an anomaly
That's a good point. I had to walk through it a few times last summer, and was shitting myself at first, but it's actually quite nice in the sunlight. Wouldn't want to be hanging around there after dark though.
>>15162 >It's obvious you never lived in one.
I'm plenty familiar, I assure you (and if hair in the plughole is the worst you have to deal with then Christ you should be thanking your lucky stars).
>I'm done with my student young lad days, and when you gain that bit of maturity, you also want independence and privacy. So sharing a bathroom with 8 others doesn't exactly appeal to me - especially if they're filthy fuckers, and especially if no one actually cleans up after themselves. The last thing I need is to argue with some prick about who left the huge turd stain in the toilet, or which lass' hair is clogging up the drain. After looking the other way and just cleaning up after them - you just get sick of it and settle for squalor. This is awfully depressing as I mentioned you're tied to living in one place for at least a year.
All fair points, but if you were done with halls of residence, why did you elect to move into halls of residence..? It's like the answer was staring you right in the face.
(I once managed to convince the accommodation department to refund my rent for the remainder of the year when I moved away, but I suspect that wouldn't work today.)
>international students
I lived in halls with a bunch of international students (mostly Chinese), generally they were massively easier to live with than British students - they didn't make a mess and were respectful. If I went back to uni now and for some reason had to live on campus I'd definitely want to live in an international block, ideally postgrad.
Well I moved specifically into post-grad accommodation on the basis that I was accepted into a program last minute, and I was abroad at the time. So naturally, I didn't want to waste even more time rolling the dice in ending up in a shit area with shit people. I was extremely lucky with my flatmates, they are a delightful bunch.
> if hair in the plughole is the worst you have to deal with then Christ you should be thanking your lucky stars
I don't want to get into a one-up-manship pissing contest, but there was a ream of piss-offs and horrible instances throughout my experiences of living with people. Druggies, food theft, smashed up halls, parties that went on to until 8am, furniture being set alight and tossed off balconies. Etc...
The Chinese are alright, a mixed bunch, some are very respectful and clean, others the complete opposite. Some are just downright aliens that have no concept of civility, hygiene or personal space.
>>15168 >I don't want to get into a one-up-manship pissing contest
Quite right, it sounds like we've both seen our fair share of shitty halls, let's leave it at that.
>The Chinese are alright, a mixed bunch, some are very respectful and clean, others the complete opposite. Some are just downright aliens that have no concept of civility, hygiene or personal space.
That's interesting. I must've lived with >30 Chinese students over the years, and they were all civil, respectful and clean to a fault (I remember having to convince a Chinese lass that it was ok for us to use someone else's corkscrew on a bottle of wine). They tended to lack independent thought, but that actually made for a pretty easy life as far as flatmates go.
Has anyone here ever been fined after leaving for having their flat in poor condition? My carpet's a bit of a mess and I've got paint and other stains on the wall.
>>15170 The last flat I rented I kept in pretty good condition, it was the same when I left it as it was when I arrived. The landlady decided to keep £50 out of the £500 deposit on account of "the cooker being dirty" (which was absolute bollocks, it was spotless), I couldn't be fucked to contest it but it left me feeling a bit miffed.
Apparently it's par for the course for student flats to be deemed dirty and the deposit kept, so be aware. It happened to my sister despite the place being thoroughly cleaned and I'm pretty sure she lost the lot.
>>15174 You're less likely to have that kind of thing pulled on you, if you're in the university's accommodation. The guys doing the inspections aren't getting any money out of your deposit so they're less fussed about making up rubbish. Private landlords, on the other hand, are out to milk you for every penny they can, because they're never going to meet you ever again so they may as well use your arsehole as a cunt while you're still around.
>>15173 I can't imagine anything worse than living with all Chinese people. From my experience they are terrifyingly insular, obsessed with work and only tend to socialise with other Chinese if at all. I guess it would be alright if you're also a shut-in but completely shit otherwise.
The majority were meh, but I've had some horror stories with these individuals. One little trait that they have is a tendency of sub-sub-subletting their rooms to their mates, mate's mates, and so on. So in the end it really turns into a 4 person hotel with no one really accountable for any of the flats chores. Not to mention the amount of rubbish they generate.
For some peculiar reason, instead of placing it into the waste bins outside, they stockpiled them outside their room door.
One particular day I was emptying out our recycling, and I notice a large ice-cream tub cluttering the bin. I pick it up and it rattles inside. I wish I hadn't opened it because it contained, what appeared, to be many human baby teeth. I never wretched so hard in my life. Utterly vile.
The antisocial aspect was also big too - they didn't understand the concept of not spitting on the floor, wiping up mess and just generally not being massive pigs. One of the people I recall would cook this profoundly disgusting stew made from various "things" and it would reek. It looked like something that collects in the U-bend of a sink drain boiled a million times over.
Don't even bother asking, telling off or even putting up any notes, they'll just ignored them or stare at you blankly. Now I feel utterly racist against the Chinese from all the student living memories. Great.
>Are you sure they were Chinese? I've lived loads of other Asians, and the more westernised they are, the less of a cultural issue it is.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure they were Chinese. They were "anti-social" in that they only spent time with each other, but that aside, they were pretty much optimal flatmates (I say "flatmates" but I mean that they were living in the same halls as me, for a period of two years). I'd have gasped if one of them spit on the floor, and they always kept the kitchen clean. Maybe I was lucky. Either way they were preferable to British students, who in my experience caused much more hassle.
>You're less likely to have that kind of thing pulled on you, if you're in the university's accommodation.
Pretty much. The uni are unlikely to fuck you over some wear and tear.
>>15179 Did you have to make extra effort to socialise through societies etc or did you just not give a fuck? I'm a lazy bastard - if I have to go further than my own kitchen for a casual conversation I can't be fucked.
I don't think Chinese are bad per se it's just that their culture is very far removed from our own, that barrier is always going to exist until they've lived here long enough to become (and indeed want to become) westernised.
>>15180 >Did you have to make extra effort to socialise through societies etc or did you just not give a fuck?
I didn't socialise with the Chinese, and there wasn't much opportunity to. I had a pretty active social life elsewhere at the time so it wasn't an issue. I did not expect them to become Westernised; they were here to get the bit of paper that would guarantee them employment back home. All British universities rely on such students, as I understand it.
>>15181 Oh right. If you were a fresher with no existing social life in that city it wouldn't be great then.
Where I'm at most foreign students are put in their own blocks, mostly because a lot of them stay over holidays so it makes sense to have them together then rather than spread out everywhere. Some people are claiming this has led to 'ghettos' because of relative isolation from home country freshers. This might be true but from my experience of living with overseas students a lot of them aren't interested in integrating even if you try and include them in things. I guess a lot of it is to do with determination - if you've left your family and country behind to study something it's probably because you really care about that subject and not just because it's what everyone does to delay the inevitable grindstone.
>>15178 >One of the people I recall would cook this profoundly disgusting stew made from various "things" and it would reek. It looked like something that collects in the U-bend of a sink drain boiled a million times over.
Haha, that reminds me, I also lived with this Nigerian guy who would cook something we would colloquially call "poo", because it smelt so bad. Turns out it was cow intestines. In the end, one of the rude chinese guys told him it smelt really bad or he pinched his nose, made some gestures and a funny noise to demonstrate his distaste. Afterwards, he only made his 'poo' very early in the mornings so I guess I have the chinese to thank for something.
I remember the chinese guy complaining to me about the smell. He then lifted up the lid and was about to sniff it, before I stopped him and asked him, why was he sniffing something that smelt really bad? He also once poured water all over the kitchen radiators because it the heating made the kitchen really hot. He justified it by saying he does this all the time in his office...
>>15183 Yeah we had a Nigerian guy in first year halls who made some foul smelling stew as well. He was about 30 years old and pretty cool to be honest. He kept to himself mostly, apart from the first night where he turned up late, absolutely smashed and told the fat girl (who eventually tried to kill herself, and would have died if I hadn't saved her) he wanted to fuck her mum with pizza in his mouth. One night he must have smelt weed from my room, because he knocked on the door and gave me a handful of "goody-goody", or about a gram of pretty decent weed, and then went out somewhere all night.
I quite like experiences with foreign students to be honest. I lived with a Chinese guy who also cooked some weird smelling stew thing too (I guess that sort of food is popular abroad). He was quite a laugh as well. He was gay, and quite cheeky. The girls told him to clean his mess once, and he just smiled and said "You girl, do your job" then left. He gained much respect from "the lads" that day...
>>15186 Yeah I did a few years back actually. This was in 2010, I'm an old masters student now.
I'll tell it again because it's actually quite mental, and anything to get away from revision.
It's about 2am one night and my mate knocks the door, he was looking for a game of FIFA, but the door next to me, this girls door, had caught his attention. I answer the door and he points out a long, barely legible note stuck to her door. We start reading it, the first line impossible to understand. Among the mess we found a sentence reading "...tell dad not to come to the funeral". We look at each other and start knocking on the door, no answer. Start banging on the door, no answer. By now we've woken up another girl, who is with us and equally frightened.
I try the door, its open. We walk in, the lights are still on. The layout of the room was so that we couldn't see her bed, it was around the corner. To the right of us was the toilet, door closed, fan light on. None of us particularly want to open this door, but we eventually do, very slowly... She isn't in there, so we walk into the room a bit more. We find her on her bed, a teddy bear in her arms, a thumb in her mouth. On the floor there are a ton of empty pill packets and a large empty bottle of night nurse, as well as a litre bottle of coke, fizzing with this concoction of pills and night nurse. I go to her, try and wake her, she won't wake up no matter what I do. I check for her pulse, I can't find it at first and when I do I'm not even really sure it's there.
The girl, who is freaking the fuck out by now, says to call for an ambulance, my mate gets his phone out but is so muddled he cannot type. He passes it to me and runs down to security. I ring for an ambulance, and following instruction I put her in the recovery position and perform mouth to mouth. Luckily the hospital is located basically on the campus (Swansea Uni) so the ambulance arrives very shortly after. The security people arrive at the same time, and to this day this still shocks me... as we were sitting around, watching our friend get treated by the ambulance staff, one of the security people, in a chirpy tone, asks "is it always so hot in here? I'm boiling". I nearly punch him, the girl goes outside. I follow to console her, (is it wrong I was thinking of getting my dick wet in this highly stressful situation) and whilst I'm outside the EMTS use I believe some electrical thing to bring her back. She wakes up in a complete state, throwing up this neon green liquid horror, (the smell, oh Lord the smell) and fucked out of her mind. She's screaming that one of the workers tried to rape her, they try and calm her down, warning her that if she doesn't calm down they will have to call the police. She isn't calming down. She's speaking absolute gibberish at this point, slurring her words majorly, just talking complete nonsense.
What we didn't see was the big fuck off kitchen knife by her bed. She makes fumbled attempt to grab the knife and is restrained into a wheelchair. They call the police. The police arrive and the tirade of abuse is now directed at these fine men of the law. We try and tell them that she's not in a proper state, that she's heavily drugged, but being the absolute cunts that they are, they won't have it. They get VERY shouty with the poor girl , threatening to arrest her, and she is led to the ambulance screaming and shouting. They leave. We go to the kitchen, put a tea on.
What 18 year old me wasn't prepared for was having to tell a mother that her daughter had just tried to kill herself. The university won't do it. It's policy apparently. That was difficult.
Anyway we see her in the hospital the next day or so, she's 'ok' but has done permanent damage to her liver, apparently. Whilst we were sitting around the bed, very awkwardly (awkward isn't the right word, it was more surreal than anything, like there was this massive elephant in the room) chatting, she makes a joke about how we saved her, but I probably did nothing. (I was known to just sit around smoking weed). The other girl looks at me, almost like she was hurt for me. I smiled and went along with it, and we eventually left.
She dropped out of university for a year and was told she should never drink alcohol again, as her liver was fucked. Last I heard she was addicted to meow meow or something like that.
>>15188 >some electrical thing
It's called a defibrillator. If they did indeed use one, then it meant the reason you couldn't feel a pulse wasn't that her heart wasn't beating, but that it was spasming in a random fashion ('fibrillating'). The defibrillator delivers an electric shock that sort of 'reboots' the heart's electrical signals and gets it beating rhythmically again.
>>15190 Assuming you're not trolling in poor taste, the vast majority of people who attempt suicide are not in the right state of mind and regret it later in life.
>>15191 Well, she is hardly living it up now, with a fucked liver. I don't like people who interfere. How do you know about her mental state? Suicide can be a logical and rational. It is just you who is being illogical and irrational, shouting down at people from your high-horse.
>>15195 You really are a cunt, aren't you? Unless the person attempting suicide has carefully considered it for an extended period of time, and is totally sound of mind, then fair enough they can go to Dignitas or whatever. But most who attempt suicide aren't sound of mind, they've got mental health issues or are in such emotional distress that suicide seems like the best option at the time, but when they're out of that massive low they can see it wasn't the right thing to do. A drunk young person who presumably suffered from some sort of mental illness is hardly the best person to be making an informed choice as to whether or not they end their life, so the people who helped her did the right thing.
>>15195 God I only hope you're trolling. In which case, well done. Fair play.
But in case you aren't... well, as the other poster says, a lot of suicides are done in an unfit state of mind. After the incident I did a lot of reading into suicides and this is what I found out, anyway. Certainly this girls was. And like I said, I'm glad I took that risk (to even humour your thinking).
And yes, whilst I agree with people choosing the right to die (in a certain context, I don't think it should be entirely supported all the time so freely), I also think if you are going to do something like this in front of people who care or love for you, do it completely out of the blue, with no warning, you should accept the risk of them interfering. If I have to take some responsibility then so should you.
