Whoops...

Oh dear, along with not having a primary school placement (which I'm sure will sort itself out), I found another bit of paper about funding.

Specifically tuition fees.

My bursary is all fine, and is to be sorted come induction week, but my tuition fees should have been sorted via my Local Authority, something I'd missed in my hunting through stacks of forms...

A speedy phonecall to a very disapproving Cumbrian lady, and hopefully a speedy form by first post should mean I get money in time. If not, £3000 is going to have to be extracted from the grubby (I lie, I'm sure they're not grubby at all) mitts of my stockbroker, which will be paid back (how odd, paying back my own money), but it's a scary amount of money to ask for!

Am such an eejit. I hate forms, I have a bit of a tendancy to speed read them, and could do with the important bits (ie, the bits I need to do asap) highlighted, with big red arrows pointing at them. This whole "Plain English Campaign" and the "Crystal Clear" award is a mockery. What we actually need is forms that only contain the bare minumum required to work out if you want to sign them.

An example:

Do you accept that you're signing away your free time, soul and much of your sanity?

Y/N

Initials........................................................................

Congratulations, welcome to the PGCE! Now sort your own funding, or prepare to eat Morrisons BettaBuy bread and beans for the next 9 months.


See? That's all they needed to say. Instead of hiding it on the back of a bit of paper you get in the interview, where you're so wobbly on adrenaline, lack of sleep and a need to write two pages on how to make a classroom a welcoming place to horrible kids in 30 minutes, that they're lucky you don't use it to wipe the sweat of terror from your brow and armpits, then chuck it away.

At least I have the joy of writing in a brand new notebook to look forward to. WH Smiths is a frightening place when you've been away from university for two years, all of a sudden you need lever arch files, narrow ruled paper and file dividers again, and you have to fight past hordes of 18 year olds who can't decide between the recycled, organic, carbon neutral notepad, or the one with skulls on, who'll be sharing freshers week with you.

I don't know what's scarier, going back to uni, or going back to uni with people who weren't even born in the 80's. This year's freshers will have been born in 1990. A truly sobering thought.