Hi all!

How are you guys doing? I am a newbie here and would really like to have some sort of communication with strangers (soon friends) about my current studies.
I am in the final term of my masters and I am feeling anxious and lost especially due to the recent strike. Don't get me wrong, I totally support my lecturers on this matter. However, I need to be frank that losing A LOT of contact hours is not what I has signed up for. As taught master is only a year and I am an international student, I believed that I had much more to gain from the lost contact hours. I tried to work independently, did group discussion and tried to read as much articles that I could, yet, I did not feel the same satisfaction as attending classes.

And now, I am having break for the Easter and I need to carry on one research, two assignments and one dissertation. I am feeling overwhelmed of all this! I am uncertain of my capabilities right now and I am terrified if I could not produce great results.


Fuh! that feels good. I am sorry for this prattle. I just need to spill it out. Thanks for reading!

Feel free to drop at my new blog : https://sitiborhanudin.wixsite.com/academic

I have no idea why you fully support your lecturers. They have deliberately targetted students with both the timing and duration of the strikes and for many students this will result in life changing drops in final grades.
Unfortunately I have no idea what to recommend here. There is an entire year of students being screwed over here. My own daughter is one of them although she is able to teach herself from books so will be OK.

Wow, if you have academic teacher strikes, things must look very bleak indeed. I don't know a group with a stronger work ethics.
Here it's similar with medical doctors.

For the record I'm a lecturer but I wasn't at a striking University. PM you are always going on about needing to stand up for yourself, well that is exactly what the lecturers have done. I guess you just don't like it when it affects you or your daughter? I suppose you think a strike would still be effective in the middle of summer? Lecturers don't ask to become rich (most won't) but have asked for the terms and conditions they signed up to to be protected.

In relation to what students can do. You will need to be active in your learning, which it appears the OP has done. It might not be as satisfactory but the whole situation isn't really satisfactory. The Universities themselves will have to come up with a solution to mitigate the damage done, so personally as a student I wouldn't be too worried. It will be top of the Universities' agendas as to what they are going to do. The lecturers don't intend to damage their students' education, obviously. In fact it might be an education in people power. It is unfortunate that students are the innocents caught in the crossfire here, but ultimately (especially as most students support lecturers) they are both fighting for future students.

'Deliberately targeted students' = withdrawn their labour in an effort to disrupt university processes so as to stand up for their employment rights - a course of action which is very close to winning significant concessions, by the way, which has basically discredited the narrative that this was unavoidable, pension fund hugely in deficit, no way around it, etc. We have won the right to an independent valuation. We have pushed back against unreasonable changes to our terms and conditions.

I have attended UCU branch meetings throughout the strike and I can assure you that the overwhelming sentiment is that everybody wants it over and done with as soon as possible with minimal harm to students' education. It is unfortunate that students are caught in the dispute but the nature of our jobs demands it if we want to employ collective bargaining.

This is how industrial action works. If you don't like it, presumably you don't agree with strikes in principle. Sounds like the typical small-minded British attitude to trade unionism - grousing and bitterness when other workers take the initiative to stand up for themselves and protect hard-won rights and benefits that they themselves don't have/have lost. Because I don't have a decent defined-benefits pension, nobody should. Reverse solidarity. It stinks, frankly.

I agree strongly with everything that PD has said.

OP, you should be fine - sorry that you have been affected, and I agree that it's not nice to miss contact hours - but PG is about independent study - sounds like you're doing it. Well done.

So like I said, lecturers deliberately targetted their strikes at this time of year because it would have maximum impact, knowing full well students would suffer. That is where they lost the moral high ground.

As I explained earlier, my daughter will be fine because only one module is affected and she has taught herself after successfully asking the strikers to put the notes online, but countless thousands will not be.

Striking at this time was not the only option.

If minimising student disruption was the aim then why strike at the worst possible time of the year for them?
No I'm sorry but this was done deliberately. You can dress it up howeve you like but striking lecturers will cause untold damage to the futures of thousands of students. It really is unforgiveable.
Any striking should have either been done over the summer or should have been of limited duration. An entire month at this time of year is unacceptable.

You appear to have asked me a question and then answered it yourself without bothering to give me the opportunity to speak for myself.
There is a word for that but I forget what it is.
In a normal conversation I would be allowed to respond in my own words, provoking further debate but in this case you have rushed to a conclusion about me based on absolutely no evidence at all. It's a very modern phenomenon.
Honestly, I blame Facebook and Twitter for this sort of thing.