Applying for everything else

The course isn't everything.  I'm sure you know, a typical course at University now (depending on where you live and apply) is £9000 per year, then you have maintenance to think about, and childcare!  Am I going to be able to work as well?  Can I stay in University accommodation to save on my rent?

When I went for my interview, I was thrilled to discover that there was a provision in place to house families in their first year.  This was perfect for me, so I looked up the application process.  It was quite late in the year, but I decided to wait until the application process opened, because it sounded so good!  They even have a campus nursery, so I filled in everything I could on the application and sent it in.

I enrolled on 6th August, quite late at night, but thought it would be essential to enroll before I applied for housing - what if I got to the housing application and it forced me to the enrolling process before it would let me put my name on that list!  After enrolling, I got my timetable, which was a total shock - three or four days a week, my lessons finish at 6pm, and there isn't another class for me to swap to!  That's far too late for my son, so I needed to seriously sit down and think about this...

Knowing that if I managed to make the timetable work, I'd still need somewhere to live, I decided to still apply for University housing.  The applications opened on 7th August - yesterday morning - and I was there 40mins early on the website, watching it count down...  I even took a picture closer to the time!

When that counter hit zero, I logged right in, with only 24 people ahead of me in the queue!  I'm not sure how many people actually applied, but 25th on that list sounds like good going!  After four minutes and some simple questions, it was all over.  No "enter five years of your housing history" or "what was the maiden name of your father's first pet dog" or anything silly...  Just what type of house did I want.  Given that I was opting for "family", a lot of the difficult choices like which college to join were made for me.  Easy as pie!

But, of course, that's not the end of the story.  Housing is first come, first serve, but also based on a tier process - International students get priority.  I'm not begrudging, exactly, but it's difficult to hear that you might find out in the month before you move that you can't live in University housing.  The past two days have been spent trying to find a private rent place that's suitable for me and Elim.  I have some viewings booked next weekend and we'll go from there...

I'm not sure what I can afford until I know how much housing benefit I can get to help out.

I'm not sure how much housing benefit I'm entitled to until I have a childcare grant.

I can't even apply for the childcare grant until I have a nursery place.

I can't get a nursery place for another week, and it's dependant upon my timetable.

And finally, I am currently waiting on an e-mail about my timetable, so everything has kind of ground to a halt!

Therefore, my mantra of the day -

"When your ability to control external events is limited or nonexistent, you must learn to control your inner responses" - Anon