York St John University

York is an amazing place to study. The student accommodation is close to the university and can be as less as a 20-minute walk. There are loads of places and if you have a car it is very convenient, especially when studying for a PGCE as I had to drive to placement for my course; I was given a permit to park my car which helped massively during Covid 19.
The security was amazing and when there were incidents the staff were able to come straight away and deal with it.
During Covid 19, the staff were always easy to talk to and had to email but they were quick with their responses and could help you as much as possible. If talking over email was not good enough, the staff would also make sure that they were available for a video call to talk things over. As covid 19 had a great effect on people's mental health, the well-being team were also amazing and it was very important to me to talk to them as I struggled massively and being far from home made this easier as I wanted to see my family but due to health conditions and covid 19 I was unable too.
When I could, the library was a fantastic facility to book and take out books to help with my assessments, I wish that I could have spent more time in the facility especially to help with my CPD time in my course. The books were very helpful and you could take out 10 books at a time. As my accommodation was close to the university it was also easy to pick up and drop off the books and it was a very easy process to follow. I find it much more productive to use books and the internet when doing assignments and writing my dissertation too.

City residence was good to live in during my time at university and I was able to make a lot of friends.
There were lots of issues with the accommodation such as the hygiene and the fact that one of the buildings had been refurbed whereas the other blocks had been left.
It took a while sometimes for the repair to come out and fix it and it was also quite annoying that you had to email them with a concern or if there was anything that you were not sure about.
There was also a gate which was not locked every night and when the public walked past the accommodation they were able to throw things at us and also shout verbal abuse which made some of the residents quite scared and unsure of the accommodation. The security always said that there was nothing that they could do but as students all we wanted them to do was lock the gates so we felt more safe and secure in the accommodation.