Adrian Hayter’s Blog

Practically every student applies for a loan to cover maintenance and fees at university, and to get it you have to go through an organisation called the “Student Loans Company”. The process of applying for a loan is very complex, as usually both the student and his/her parents (if he/she lives with them) have to go through a long questionnaire. After this, the student is required to send some form of identification (passport or birth certificate), and the “parents” are required to send in information about their salary (P60’s etc).

Simple…at least it should be.

I applied for my loans back in May (well before the deadline) and sent off my passport, as well as my mother’s salary details, and my mother’s partner’s salary details. My passport came back to me about a week later, and we assumed they were keeping the salary information in order to do more checks and calculations of how much I should be getting.

Two weeks ago, I was getting concerned, mainly because some friends of mine had received their loan confirmation yet they had applied after myself. I phoned up and spoke to an advisor who told me that “[my] loan would be confirmed soon and [I] would receive a letter in the post within a week”. So, I waited a week…and still nothing.

It was 2 days ago that I decided to phone up again and ask what was going on. This time I got through to a Scotsman who told me that he had no idea what the previous guy was talking about. Apparently the Student Loans Company hadn’t even confirmed my parent’s salary information yet. He was extremely helpful, and gave me the direct number to call, although by that time the lines had closed.

So today I finally give them a call, and get through to a woman who says that they received my passport, but no details about my parent’s salaries. I told her that was impossible since I had sent them all in the same envelope, and that my passport had been sent back. We also sent the package with a delivery receipt, so we know for a fact that it had been delivered successfully. She told me she would go and check my file, and came back saying that there had been some huge mistake, and that the salary details were there!

So apparently my loan will be processed and confirmed on Monday, but they’ve made such a mess of the process so far I will be phoning up to check anyway. This should serve as a warning to future students: Never trust the Student Loans Company! The least you can do is phone up every few weeks to check the progress of your application, and make sure you do it multiple times since you’ll probably get a different answer depending on who you speak to.

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I haven’t made a blog post for a week or so, and even though I have meant to quite a few times, things have come up at the last minute. However, I’m now free for 20 minutes or so, so I thought I would crack one off.

Last week was my last week at work, and it started well (with a bank holiday Monday to relax on) and the weekend prior had been filled with fun at the beach and great weather. Things started going wrong there though, and I felt ill through Sunday evening and all day Monday. Assuming I had recovered on Tuesday, I went into work, sat down, and promptly threw up all over my desk. Evident that things were just going to get worse, I went home and spent the entire day in bed.

The next couple of days (Wednesday and Thursday) were also spent at home while I shook off the stomach bug I had apparently contracted. By Thursday I had practically starved myself for 2 days so I spent the day building up my strength again. On Friday (my last day) I finally actually went to work for the last time. It was a great day, and I will miss all of my friends that I made there.

On Friday afternoon, Jennie, my girlfriend came down to stay for a week which is great! We haven’t seen each other in over a month due to various commitments on either side but at least I have her all to myself for a week. The next time I’ll see her is after my freshers week at University, which is in just less than a month.

Speaking of University, things are really starting to heat up and get exciting. With only a few weeks until I leave, people are talking about it all the time, especially on sites like Facebook. I can’t wait to get there and meet everyone I’ve met through the various Groups I’ve joined on it. I’ve finally got my Student Insurance sorted out, and my student bank account should be available to use within a few days. The Student Loan Company haven’t sent my declaration form through yet though (and they said they would send it last week) so I’ll have to give them a phone call tomorrow.

As for other things in life, even though I’ve been following the Bioshock story since last year, I somehow totally managed to miss the release of the actual game. I bought it a few days ago and my initial reactions to it are good. The entire look and feel of it is breathtaking, as are the abilities you can use in it. The only thing that I can find fault with at the moment is the physics engine, which somehow manages to throw enemies through walls that they really should bounce off…to the point that two Splicers I had just killed fell through a tunnel and into the water outside.

The story behind it is great though, and I look forward to playing it more and more in the next few weeks.

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