This is always my ‘go to’ karaoke song, so now I fear for all of my Coms Team as this will probably be in my head all day and every time someone decides to walk out of the door, I will probably put on my best Gloria Gaynor impersonation and sing at them to ‘go on now go, walk out the door, don’t turn around now, cause you’re not welcome any more!’
Today’s blog is for those of you who have been sent accommodation offers and may be disappointed with the offer that you have been given. As per the blog title, I want you to all release the inner diva in you and sing loudly “I will survive!” Over to Residence Life Helen to give you some words of wisdom…
“As you know, you might not be allocated accommodation that’s in one of your three preferences. You know it in theory – but in practice, for some people this can still be a shock. If you get an offer you weren’t expecting, you might feel unhappy, anxious or even angry. This is not what was supposed to happen, surely? And because it’s something outside your control, not based upon exam results or hard work on your part having lead to the outcome – it might feel really unfair, because surely you should be able to do something about it?
Let’s break that down a bit.
When you first applied for accommodation, you probably spent some time looking at your options. Probably you noticed 1) wow, there are a lot of different options!, and 2) some of those options are listed as being oversubscribed. That’s because every year, we know we’ll get more applications for some residences than others. Those popular residences aren’t necessarily any better (they aren’t – whisper it – even necessarily the places I’d choose, if I had my pick of all the residences); it’s just a thing that happens. Maybe they’re better known, or prospective students were able to see them on an open day; things like that can have an effect. Of course the consequence is that we aren’t going to be able to allocate those popular residences to everyone who wants them, or guarantee to match your preferences to whichever residences you’ve opted for. It’s just not possible, however much we’d like to make you all happy. (And we’d like that a lot!)
I can tell you from experience that there isn’t a correlation between whether or not students are allocated the accommodation they wanted and how happy they are living in it. The vast majority of students I meet say that wherever they lived, it was definitely the best place to live and they’d recommend it – even when they’d never heard of it before they got the offer! I know Streatham-based students who rave about living at Rowancroft and students in twin rooms who have had the most fantastic experience and didn’t want to leave at the end of the year. I would genuinely be happy to live in any of our residences and I think there are great aspects to all of them. Please see our previous blog post for a breakdown of on/off residences.
If you’ve had an offer that wasn’t what you were expecting, it’s because when the allocations team reached your application, they read through everything you’ve told us about yourself and then matched you to the best possible room they could. I know that still doesn’t feel great – our system is very fair, but in the past when I’ve been on the receiving end of fairness that didn’t go my way it’s always felt exactly the opposite afterwards! But it hasn’t happened because you’ve done something wrong, or because we’ve done something wrong; it’s happened because we just weren’t able to offer you the residence you had in mind.
So, if you haven’t had the offer you were hoping for, I’m not going to tell you not to feel disappointed. That’s a normal response when things don’t turn out the way you expected; especially when you’re preparing for a massive change in your life. But when you’ve felt disappointed for a bit, I’d really encourage you to move forward. Your new room is waiting for you to move in and make it yours. There will be people to meet, and unique things to discover about your residence; and someday in six months or a year there’s every chance you’ll be the one telling people that it’s the best place to live. I hope you have an amazing time – and I think there’s every chance you will.”
Residence Life Helen
Now back to me to update you on yesterday’s baketition entry which was made by our guest blogger of today, the lovely, Residence Life Helen. It was one of the more healthier cakes that we have received so far. It was a delightful Clementine cake which was gluten free and topped with chocolate. Feast your eyes upon the picture below to see it in it’s delectable glory.
Accommodation Catherine