You're asking a support question for a provider that most of us here have never heard of. I'd wait a day or two and then maybe open a ticket with the provider.

Maybe also look here: https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/10104/free-vps-for-open-source-developers-with-fossvps

Isn't Oracle still giving out free servers? They are known to pull the plug on those without warning, but it should be enough to play around with and set it up in a way that you can get it running again quickly if it goes down, which is very valuable knowledge.

You should check out this similar question here: https://piefed.blahaj.zone/c/selfhosted/p/650864/stupid-question-but-are-there-free-vps-vm-instances-for-a-jobless-girl-who-wants-t

Don't you have 5€/mo even? Because that what Hetzner VPS costs. Or a little spare for used Raspberry Pi 4?

My server is left on pending and no matter how I try to activate it, it doesn’t work.

Not to throw shade on your efforts, but this is pretty much the experience I had long time ago when I explored 'free' VPS. I do hope you get it going tho. They would send me a termination of my account for inactivity which is pretty ironic.

I would not use that for job experience. I would review what local job listings are looking for in experience, and practice those things.

You can run a local server on just about anything. An old PC or laptop, a VM on your current PC, even a raspberry pi or similar SBC. Even a recent Android phone, though I would really not recommend that, as it's not the same experience.

Did you sign up with a ".edu" email address? Is your university in the list of supported countries?