Help Complete Ada's Seven-Year University Journey

Hi there!

 

I’m Ada, an independent student who moved from Indonesia to the UK back in 2015. I had a single goal: To complete my university studies here and live a life I can be proud of.

 

Unfortunately, my journey over the past seven years has been an insane downward spiral of unique misfortunes and experiences.

 

What you’re reading now is the culmination of seven years of passion, suffering, and relentless determination. I have spent so long fighting on my own, supporting myself in the UK with no home or support. The very act of setting up this GoFundMe page is me breaking my seven-year-long silence, my promise to never bother others with my issues.

 

In a better world, I would be graduating from Games Development at Ravensbourne University London right about now. Instead, I have recently been withdrawn from my course, stripped away from my dream due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other circumstances outside of my control.

 

I find myself at a dead end where hard work alone won't cut it anymore, where I'm giving it 100%, 1000%, and it's still not enough. I am working fulltime just to afford rent and debt vastly out of my depths, and as a result, am trapped in place. Like clawing at a diamond mountain.

 

Now, this is me at the breaking point of a long journey that’s been going on for seven years.

 

So that’s why I’m finally speaking up. Hoping that all the time I’ve spent here means something, hoping that all the hard work I put in wasn’t for naught.

 

And that’s why I’m about to ask a very selfish question.

 

Just this once,

is it okay if I ask for your help?

 

 

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What are you raising for?

Right now, I have a chance to return to Ravensbourne University London one last time. It requires agreeing to start a monthly payment plan, which will cover the unpaid costs of my first year's tuition fee. But, I am currently cannot afford it as an independent student working fulltime and overtime just to stay afloat.

 

Therefore, I am asking for your support with the first eight months – just enough until I can return to my course and qualify for student finance.

 

 

What do you need to raise?

I am asking to help raise £290 for February 2022, and £2320 by the end of September 2022.

 

In other words, just enough to kickstart and cover the first eight months of a payment plan offered by my university. Each £290 would go towards my unpaid tuition fee between February and September. (To break down the exact equation, that's £290 x 8 = £2320.)

 

I want to be clear – I am not asking to cover the entirety of my 1st year’s tuition fee. What I am asking for is only the minimum so that I can return to my course, qualify for my two last years of Student Finance, and finally complete a journey to university which has taken seven long years so far.

 

 

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MY STORY

If I’m going to resort to this, to ask for donations and human kindness, I want to do it right. I want to be transparent. I want to share my story in full, I want to be heard, and I want to be as clear as possible with how this GoFundMe page will be helping me.

 

My situation is a desperate one. To summarize:

 

None of that was an exaggeration. The amount of things I’ve gone through, that I’ve HAD to go through, has been so out of my control that I never even knew how to ask for help.

 

I've been silent on this for so long.

 

Now, please allow me to tell my story. The seven-year journey I've undertaken, for the sake of pursuing my passions and attending a university in the UK.

 

Moving to the UK (2015)

It all began when I decided to move from Indonesia to the UK, with nothing but my own earnings and a British citizenship.

 

I had three core reasons why I did this:

 

Ultimately, after saving up money and raising roughly the equivalent of £1,500 in rupiah, I finally booked a flight over to the UK and embarked.

 

On the 3rd of June 2015, I arrived at Birmingham Airport with virtually no connections, no recognised qualifications, no external support and no financial security. The only advantage I had was that I had a British passport. I headed over a place called Northampton shortly thereafter, the only place where I knew a friend who could help with the initial transition. Otherwise, I was on my own.

 

Beginnings in the UK (2015-2018)

For a period of three years, I lived independently. I thrust myself into the unknown, and I supported myself while living on the bare minimum. Between 2015 and 2018, I worked 30-40 hours every single week to pay rent while simultaneously attending a local college. It wasn’t just a battle for survival, but a battle to keep up with my studies. To earn the right qualifications for a university, one of the very reasons why I came to this country in the first place.

 

In 2018, I earned my English/Math GCSEs and a BTEC qualification in Creative Media Production, qualifying me for university. And with that, I thought I finally got to where I wanted. There was only one uni that caught my eye, and I applied to just the one, and I got in. I was going to be a student of the super cool, super practical course of Digital Film Production, at the creative-based Ravensbourne University London.

 

Start of University (2018-2020)

I thought that would be the end of my struggles. Since I’m British and an independent student, I believed I was entitled to student finance for university, the same as everyone else. Hence, if I move to London, knowing I ought to be entitled to the maximum maintenance loan there (roughly £11,000) and with savings to help, that would be it in theory. And I would be set, right?

 

I was excited to finally live a normal life, to take a break from the constant grind of work and just focus on my studies. To be the same as everyone else.

 

But I miscalculated.

 

On the 27th of September 2018, I was informed that Student Finance England didn’t recognise me as an independent student. This was due to a complex technicality of earnings - you need to support yourself for three years to be treated as an independent student. Unfortunately, due to living on the absolute minimum and the odd way my finances worked in 2015, I couldn’t prove that I supported myself between 2015-2016. Thus, instead of the £11,000, I got the absolute minimum of £5654.

 

And when do I get told this? After I already moved to London and settled into my new accommodation, of course.

 

Just like that, I was subjected to even more financial hardship. I landed into harsh debt, my savings got burned away, I needed to not only work, but also take out an emergency loan to save my skin. There, amidst all the stress and sacrificed time, I still did my best to keep up attending my course. In that chaos, Student Finance did reverse their position in the end. They never went back on their decision during 18/19, but they did finally recognise me as an independent student, meaning they would give me a higher maintenance loan for 19/20.

 

When this decision was made, it gave me hope that I could get my life back on the rails. Thus, I got the full funding I was promised. It was good timing as well! I’d grown a bit disillusioned with the overly high competitiveness within the film course, and was being drawn more towards media and gaming, with hobbies including coding and graphic design. The kinds of narratives I wanted to tell weren't quite working out via film, and it was during this time that I realized my true passion for Games Design.

 

For context, SFE will cover up to four years. Since most uni courses in the UK are three years long, this is defined as three years + one gift year. (As an example - I used one year in Film, and hypothetically I was free to use the remaining three years to cover a full Games course.) Then, knowing the numbers worked out and that I had an available gift year, I successfully transferred courses to a Games course at Ravensbourne.

 

I began a new course of Games at Ravensbourne. There, I made new friends, I learned about Unity and C+and for the most part those first six months were heaven to me. I still had to work part-time to cover the debts from the previous year, but that was easily manageable for me. Things were stable, and the future looked good.

 

That was when the pandemic began.

 

The Pandemic (2020-2021)

When Covid-19 hit in early 2020, everything collapsed like a house of cards. Quarantine abruptly cut me off from essential equipment I’d relied on up to that point to do my Games course. I’d left my job in advance, making me financially stranded. And worst of all, between the inability to do coursework and the loss of support, I ended up failing the first year of my Games course.

 

After that, I fell into a deep depression, with no external help and those initial debts literally still eating away at me. It got so bad that in September 2020, a delay in my next Student Finance caused me to be very briefly rendered homeless. It was a difficult period, and I was saved from the streets only thanks to the kindness of my friends.

 

Even in that condition, I soldiered on. I repeated the first year of Games Development at university for 2020-2021, and with the help of a bursary, I could afford essential equipment which helped me keep up with it. This time I put everything into my studies, and I managed to pass - but at a cost.

 

SFE covers four years, but I now had a fifth year to account for. I had assumed some semblance of my personal difficulties during the Covid pandemic would have allowed me an extra year of tuition fee support, and hoped for a Compelling Personal Reasons Application to be approved during this semester. But in the end, things did not work out. This left me with a tuition fee of £8085 for this year which I could not pay on my own. So even though I passed the first year, my inability to cover this cost prevented me from re-enrolling onto the second year.

 

And due to my inability to pay, I was withdrawn from the university.

 

This Year (2022)

Ever since then, I have been working 40+ hours a week and earning as much as I possibly can in an effort to clear my debts, hoping to save up enough for the tuition fee.

 

And you know what? I would be okay with that. If I was able to manage living that way between 2015-2018, then I am completely okay with persevering another year or two of my life if it meant I could've solved this on my own. If it meant I could claw back to stability, and focus on pursuing my passions and my dreams for once. If the numbers worked out, I wouldn't need to resort to this.

 

But I can’t even have that privilege. The diamond mountain I’m facing is so gigantic that I’m still taking net losses and not gains. Despite all my hard work, I'm nowhere close to clearing my debts, let alone covering the tuition fee. I’m exhausted and I’m watching in realtime as my very efforts are sinking into a deep abyss with no fruit to bear.

 

Fortunately, things have finally started to go my way a bit in the past few months. While working, I have been fighting to return back to my Games studies. My university and I have been in a constant period of discussion over the past year. Now, very recently, Ravensbourne University London has finally offered a glimmer of light in the form of a monthly payment plan.

 

Present Day

That brings us to today, and this GoFundMe page.

 

I’m already combating my rent, living expenses, and roughly £3,965 of remaining debt while at the end of a £2000 overdraft, with £714.27 being demanded rather urgently of me (and this is after all the hard work I’ve already been doing). I’m sacrificing literally everything else, and I’m alone, and I can’t fight on all fronts on my own.

 

GoFundMe has been suggested to me time and time again over the past years. Admittedly I refused many times, because I don’t like asking for help. I don’t like owing people, and I don’t like the pressure of bothering or disappointing others.

 

I never wanted to do this. It feels scary to put yourself out there, and it feels humiliating to ask for any kind of help. Especially after I received aid in avoiding homelessness back in 2020, I hoped to never have to rely on anyone again.

 

But at the end of the day, I care more about my passions. I care more about finishing university, I care more about pursuing the very thing I came to this country to do in the first place, and I care more about actually trying to live my life for once.

 

So here I am, finally biting the bullet.

 

 

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WHY I NEED YOUR HELP

If I am able to keep up with the costs of this payment plan leading up to September, Ravensbourne University London will allow me to return to my Games Development course.

 

That will enable me to return to university in 2nd year, while simultaneously letting me qualify for a new maintenance loan from Student Finance England. This means I might gain up to a total of £12,667, at which point I could support the remaining £5,765 on my own throughout the last two years.

 

If I can make it to the end of September 2022 with all payments made on time, this would guarantee not only my ability to finish my course, but my financial future as a whole. It would still be hard for me, but it's a fight I can fight.

 

In other words, with your aid:

 

The reason why I was able to come this far, why I have persevered so much and why I am here today, is simple. Because all this time, I’ve had a passion – to create narratives of hope.

 

I have found myself inspired by so many different games. From the gorgeous aesthetics and heavy philosophical beauty of Nier, to the crazily fun mystery-solving mechanics of Ace Attorney and Danganronpa. From the fun emotional rollercoaster of Undertale, to the magical immersion of the niche visual novel Mahoutsukai no Yoru, to the sheer interactive engagement and movie-like qualities of more mainstream games like The Last of Us, Life Is Strange, and Beyond: Two Souls.

 

Beyond that, I genuinely feel like there is literally so, so, so much more that can be done in the field of games development. That is to say, I want to help create interactive media that can invoke all sorts of emotion in people. I want players to be engaged by games rife with powerful drama and beautiful visuals. I want players to find joy, and I want players to experience a strong sense of catharsis. Most of all, I want to make games I think people would enjoy.

 

I literally just want the same opportunity as everyone else. To live my life in a way I can be proud of.

 

Hence, please consider sharing and spreading the word!

Any contributions would mean the world to me, no matter how big or small.

 

Will you help me?