A few points:
“A simple email would be so helpful sometimes. If it were sent to my real email address, instead of my Uni one that no one ever checks, that would be helpful as well.”

Well, the uni sends to an email address that they gave you simply because then you can’t claim that you never received the email, or you forgot to tell them about your address changing, or if you junk mail filter block it, so that’s fair enough. The solution for you is if the uni could PLEASE enable POP forwarding instead of having the stupid webmail interface – that way you could just have it in your thunderbird as well as another email address.

Also, I really like your idea for sending a package to your prac teacher. The prac teacher should definitely be in contact with your lecturer / tutor / whoever constantly to help you improve and to know what to do with you. This is a must. I can’t believe that they don’t do it.

Finally – I really think you should mention the name of your uni – to warn others, even if it’s just in the comments section. Nothing’s going to change if they don’t know what’s wrong. Hell, it might not change anyway – but the uni should be reading this – seriously.

Your uni lacks so much in the way of communication and technology from so many other uni’s, and it doesn’t make up for it in organisation or helpfulness either. You’re uni is definitely somewhere that readers should beware of.

Anyway, that was a good read. Well done.