My car feels much better now

You muppet.

We have to chuffing download all of it just to read your fourteen words at the bottom.

It always surprises me how urban planners can include so much "green" and still get it all so sadly wrong. Impermanence? That may be because the town councils are always ripping up their toytown road layouts and trying new roundabouts? Anyone for a backhander?

Yeah, it's a shame - there are good courses and tutors out there, the kind that fire you up and keep you on track. However, once you're on a course it's kinda hard to change your mind. And who reviews / rates these things anyway? At the age you are when making the choice, it's unlikely you've got the contacts / nous / wherewithall to know what questions to ask, and who to ask.

There's too much made of the notion that tutors kept spouting: you're all adults now, it's not up to us to keep pressurising you for coursework. Bollocks! Handholding isn't needed but some fire and vigour are.

I stuck with my mickey-mouse art college course strongly suspecting that everyone was going to "pass". We all did, none of us got merits in any of the subjects we excelled at, the whole thing had been rigged to make the course / unit look okay.

Sadly by the time we all realised we'd been taken for a ride, we were all too bloody apathetic to do anything about it. My biggest regret was refusing the option to transfer for a further year to a better gaff to get a Degree extension.

This was 15 years ago, and it sounds like nothing has bloody well changed. Apart from being charged for the shit now.

Precisely. FWIW, the tutors, and the department in general, were excellent, and very supportive and helpful at Surrey. The head of department even told us all, at the Tonmeister open day (special open day just for my course), that his intention was to put us all off choosing to do the course. In other words, he wanted us all to be really sure that we wanted to do the course. I thought I was - turned out I wasn't all that interested after all. Still, I made quite a few good friends there (from my course, and from other things, like the student radio station), and I don't regret leaving the course, so I made the right decision. At the end of the day, uni suits some people and not others, and you've got to have the right attitude and goals and frame of mind to really do well at it.

Peter

I quit my degree at Bristol after 2 years and managed to convince Nottingham to let me onto their course without having to repeat the first year. At times I wondered why I had bothered, and perhaps I should just have followed my dream of being a train driver (lol!). I knew I wasn't going to get a stunning result unless I put my back into it, but always though "I'll work harder next year". Somehow this year I found the determination to actually work harder and graduate on Friday with a 2:1 and a good job starting in September, which has made it all worthwhile. It's been a funny 5 years. 2 unis, a fiance for 3 of them before we both saw the light and told each other to get lost, a bit of depression, lots of new friends and lots of lost friends. It's been a hell of a struggle.

Would I do it all again - you bet I would!!

The thing is after you've paid £1200 (plus £thousands of tax money), it seems a shame to abandon the course. The first year wasn't too bad. It was a bit easy because I had done most of it at A level, so I just assumed that it was because we were new, but the 2nd year just went down hill. I don't know what I want to do do with my life now, I think I've been put off computers now. I wanna just start my life again, and get a 'normal' job, maybe something like a driving instructor. My parents want me to earn lots of money, but I don't care about money anymore.

I don't know much about that really, I can't understand a word my tutor says because he's Chinese. Last time he asked me a question three times and I still couldn't understand him, so he just moved onto the next question lol. Maybe I should ask him to draw pictures next time ;-).

I don't need any handholding or vigour, but some guidance would be good. We chose our modules a few months ago, but we've never had a handbook explaining what the modules are, so we had to look at a list and guess what they were all about on the day. Two modules were 'Graphics 1' and 'Graphics 2', I just did both hoping that they were good.

As for the handholding, we've got some VERY patronising lectures at uni who teach us like children, everyone just wants to punch them! We've also had a 'Careers Management Skills' module. Which is about researching jobs, choosing one and explaining what it's about etc. It's a load of rubbish, but it goes towards our final result :-o.

Our lectures are REALLY bad. In one lecture there was 8 people out of over 100 because it was so rubbish!

Yeah, a 1st does seem possible at Reading, but it's pretty hard to fail. I think a fail's less than 30%, and you can probably get more than that just from coursework.

I think the whole system's probably rubbish!

Oh, I don't have these problems with 512kbps of bandwidth :-P. I wouldn't have thought it would make a huge difference with a modem though, but never mind. I'm trimming my posts now :-D.

Sodd ing irritating when you pay by the MByte though.

So it didn't occur to you to perhaps ask the lecturers what the modules were about and what material they covered? In any case I don't believe there was no information available. And you say you don't need hand-holding!

I recognise that attitude - it's the attitude that contributed towards my failure at Bristol - in our case the module was called Professional Studies. Fortunately I was lucky to be given a second chance, which I made sure I didn't waste.

Or because the students have bad attitudes? Or perhaps only 8 out of 100 chose to do that module?

Fail is less than 40% at university.

What you don't seem to realise is that there is always an aspect of everything you do which you do not like. Even your dream course or drream job would contain things you don't like. What you need to do is grow up a bit, realise that this is how the world is and get on with it. It can be a hard thing to realise - I know because I've been there, done that and got more than my fair share of tee-shirts.

No.

There was a book, but there were also long queues and they would've never got through the queue if we had a look at the book.

Some students do have bad attitudes, but the main reason was because the lecture was rubbish. There were over 100 doing the module, infact I think it was one of the biggest modules, in the first lecture the whole room was full :-o.

You're right actually.

There isn't much of the degree that I enjoy though. It's all boring, slow and I can't understand some of the lecturers. We have signed a petition about the ribbish lectueres.

Yep, it's very hard to realise, but I dunno whether I can get on with it!

haha. I got a "pass" for the Professional Studies module but didn't turn up for one lecture, or turn in one page of work. Why? I was on 6 month secondment to the PR unit at British Gas! What a f**king farce.

Actually PS was one of my better marks - at least I passed that one! My all time best (or worst!) was writing "I have forgotten all of the formulae" followed by three half remembered formulae. I then sat and pretended to be busy for 3 hours. I got 17% in that one.

Disgraceful.

The thing about PS was that the university knew it was crap, and didn't take it seriously. Net result very few students took it seriously. They even said things like "Yeah it's a load of tosh, but we have to do so the course can be acredited by the IMechE". I'm not using that as an excuse for my own bone idleness, but it didn't help.

I get my results on Thursday, I'll have to let you know how bad I've done :-D