As my teacher training fast approaches, my summer has been a relatively anxious one. I’m not nervous about my ability to teach, because I know it’s the right environment for me and I am confident in my natural talent for teaching. Instead, I have been stressing over matters of finance, administration, and housing.
Arranging finance via Student Finance England has been a hoot. As is customary, I applied several months ago, and am still awaiting some kind of confirmation that I will receive a loan. With my course starting in a week, money could become an issue. Never mind though, this is Student Finance England, and it’s what we all expect. They live in their own little bureaucratic bubble, where every named thing is constantly rebranded, and every paper trail leads either in circles or to insanity.
The administrative side has been a great laugh too. Both my university for next year, and the college that I will be a member of, supremely enjoy getting me to fill in masses of forms and send them in their direction. Some of them can only be partially completed by the time that they must be returned.
However, both of these considerably stressful processes are minute and insignificant in comparison to the lifespan-shortening stress caused by sorting out accommodation. As the university did not have enough room to offer accommodation to more than about half a dozen of the 200 or so people on the course, everybody has been engaged in a frantic search for a place to live. Everyone has to group into people who they may not get on with, whilst dealing with letting agents who are shark-like in nature, or would be if sharks were that unsympathetic and horrid.
The lettings agent I’ve been dealing with are having the times of their lives scamming me out of money. Their website proclaims “minimal fees for tenants” whilst charging us £150 each to complete a form for them. They insisted that we couldn’t move in on the 28th August, but insisted with even more force that we had to be charged from that date. (You’d think that’s illegal, but apparently not). Meanwhile, in spite of the admin fees, they have sent a tenancy agreement around to us where they’ve not even spelt my surname correctly. And, upon reading the tenancy agreement, you soon discover that it’s a set of conditions that no prospective tenant should ever have to agree to, were it not for the fact that they’d essentially find themselves homeless if they didn’t submit to the unreasonable demands.
I just want to be a teacher – a job which is beneficial to society – but I am punished for it by having all my money taken from me and given to people who are no better than financial leeches, who serve no useful purpose in society whatsoever, other than to illustrate what people should not be like. Teaching is remarkably fulfilling, but comes at a heavy financial price. I wish I could concentrate on teaching without having to worry about my own future prosperity, but this is the lot to which the government is content to condemn non-wealthy citizens who wish to start a career in the public sector.
It’s a good job I am determined to teach and have a conscience, or I would have long ago adopted the aim of screwing everyone over by being a rich letting agent.
