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Friday 30 August 2013

Clearing and GOOOO Grease Lightening!!!

So it’s officially nearing the end of August… time really does fly by when you’re on holiday (well… when you’re not in term time anyway… as technically I’m not on holiday… I’m at work). It feels so good to be reunited with everyone in the Enquiry Unit at the university (I hope the feeling is mutual!) and of course to be working alongside the newbies that have joined us for the Clearing period! The office has been busy busy busy from the very first day of Clearing and the phones just haven’t stopped ringing since!

Clearing can be a very stressful time of year for students (especially for those who didn't quite expect to end up in Clearing and so didn't prepare themselves for it, like me). As daunting as Clearing may sound, it is a rather straight forward, pain-free experience (well…our university aims for this anyway). I've had a wide variety of calls over these past few weeks: from making Clearing applications, checking the status of applications, solving accommodation and finance queries and more recently, queries regarding online registration. Many people think that Clearing only runs for a short period of time, straight after the exam results are published, but in fact it is on-going until late September! So long as the course is available and the entry requirements to get onto the course are met, a place is pretty much guaranteed! Another common misconception people have is that they often think Clearing is only for students who haven’t met the grades required to be accepted onto their firm or insurance university choice.  From all the calls I have taken during the last two Clearing cycles, I can definitely say that yes…we do get a lot of calls from students in this situation but we also get calls from late applicants who didn't think of going to university until now, students who have excelled in their exams so are eligible for adjustment and students who want to transfer from one university to another. One thing I've definitely learnt from working at the Enquiry Unit is that you need to be able to think fast on your feet… every person ringing the office has a different query…it is our duty to understand their problem and solve it as best as we can… this can be really difficult when the office is exceptionally busy (like on results day)…


But I’m sure you’ll all be relieved to know…it is not all ‘blood, sweat and tears’ at the office…last Friday was our ‘Theme your Team’ challenge! This year’s theme was ‘A Night at the Movies’… so what other movie were my team ‘Team April’ going to do but GREASE!!! We decorated our bay with lights, records and pictures of the 50’s…and of course there was plenty of 50’s style food such as apple pie, popcorn, cola etc. And as for our team performance… there was a lot of dancing, singing , acting and plenty more food! There was some very tight competition from the other teams I must admit, but I’m still hopeful Team April have got this one in the bag! Fingers crossed and I’ll keep you posted on which team came out top real soon!