Setting up an OpenVPN server on my Netgate SG-3100 router was a piece of cake thanks to the pfsense GUI, but seting up the Ubuntu client requires sadly still the command line.
If you have a work laptop, you can take it home to do work. But what if you have a desktop computer and need to access it from home? The technology to make this possible exists for more than 20 years, but if you think that University IT has made this easy for you, you would be wrong. In fact, I don't know anybody who knows how to do this easily.
sudo apt-get install sg3-utils (only needed the first time)
ls /dev (to check whether sr0 or sr1, usually it's sr0 unless you had already other USB drives connected)
sg_raw /dev/sr0 EA 00 00 00 00 00 01