it says that my plan is adobe for enterprise with JISC. it shows the apps i have access to but substance painter isnt one of them which confuses me since i got a student license for it when it wasnt owned by adobe.
also i dont have anything from them in my junk folder
Substance is a plan that is different from the Creative Cloud plan. But licence activation works the same. The administrator of your school needs to activate the Substance plan for your account.
In all cases, even if you are supposed to set up the software on your computer by your own, as the school has an Enterprise subscription, the school is responsible for supporting the users. If they get in trouble with that, they have a priority channel to Adobe support.
Anyway, licencing is mandatorily managed by your school. So, you should really contact your school's IT support for that.