Lancaster University

I had a good time at university, meeting new people and experiencing new ways of studying.

Largely this was simply meeting other students, for which limited space and activities via which to do this were offered. I simply had to talk to students outside of lectures, or over group chats.

This year was a heavy financial burden. We were told to work for 30 hours or more per week on our MAs. If I had followed this advice strictly, I'd have had no time for work, and financial support offered by student loans and by the university is not nearly enough to cover the difference.

Parking at the university was expensive. £2 for 2 hours, but lectures were 2 hours long so we had to pay for all day, for either £3, including a long walk with our laptops and books, or £5 if you decided it would be more sociable to not be sweaty and smelly by the time you got to the lecture hall. Student parking should be subsidised from the exorbitant fees we paid.

There are parking permits offered for a significant discount - if you parked every day, all year. We had no idea if we were going to be on campus in any new month due to Covid changes. This was not Lancaster's fault, but again, we were not offered sufficient alternative.

I'm also still very bitter about having been charged £15 for the privilege of being a 'member' of the graduate college. A membership I had no choice in, and was simply charged for being a post-graduate student. This was supposed to help pay for upkeep and events. There were no events until the end of year party, which tickets were individually charged for.

The library was closed at 6pm or 10pm depending on the day. This information wasn't clear, and we had to trawl the internet or show up at the door to find out. Even so, some areas of Lancaster website said it was open 24 hours, some said it closed at 6 or 10.

Calling the library for information was a futile task. The security guards helped us more with library issues throughout our year there, much more than the library staff did.

Sincerely, I want to show respect to the library security personnel. It is only unfortunate that they are left to do other people's work and interact with students regarding study issues.

Laptops were not available to borrow. Most of the terminals to find out information were closed and we were offered One Search via our own phones as an alternative. The odd time we found staff to ask questions on books we were more often politely told to pull up One Search and do it ourselves.

Study spaces were available but either in vast glass walled rooms, or in comfortable somewhat private cubicles which were only supposed to host one pupil. They seemed to enforce this by only switching on one of two plug sockets, so when we were fed up enough to just use the areas anyway, we had to share a socket for our laptops. I understand this was Covid regulation but reasonable alternatives for not studying alone were not offered in my opinion. We were also subsequently asked to pack up at 9.30pm due to closing, when in other years we could have studied late. Funnily enough, this was one of the rare occasions on which we met library staff, who wanted to go home.

Firstly, some of the tutors are amazing at their jobs. Though I have some minor issues with some lecturers' teaching methods, tutors and lecturers are largely not the issue.

Teaching was largely online. We were brought in for some in person teaching during Covid but it was limited to before Christmas, and all introductory classes were done online.

It wasn't good. The platforms were unreliable and the classes were wholly impersonal and largely uninteresting. Tutors tried to make them engaging by directly engaging with students, though this quickly turned into targeting behaviour, the likes of which I expected in school, not at MA level. This seems largely down to a lack of training and/or understanding. Forced involvement is not engagement.

There were office hours. They were regular if you wanted them.

Communication with tutors was wholly online outside of pre-Christmas lectures. Some tutors were keen to reply to emails and help. Some took days to reply to emails that students considered urgent. Some emails were never responded to.

There was a careers advisor. I don't seem to have access to him now. There are some careers conferences available, but I can't seem to sign up to alumni status in order to access them.

Plenty of emails were offered on student support. I can't comment on wellbeing of disability support but financial support felt particular difficult to access when I looked into it.

Emails asking for support were replied to slowly, and with limited information pointing me towards other sources of information, rather than helping me directly.