Year 12 - first half term DONE.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

new thread so we don't get lost. Well done to all our dc whether doing btech (or breach as autocorrect prefers to call it) or a levels. 1/6 of the way through this year. (blimey)

So it must have hurt her (my other one posted mid thread)
She is worried about work etc
She won't be back for a while I suspect

offblackeggshell 'reasonably well' is a relatively detailed post-exam break down. When DS1 came out of each of his GCSE exams, every single one was 'OK' (it turned out that the grades in these varied between A and D).

offblack - so difficult to tell!!! it's done now at least.

Fantasy, I'm glad it's done. If she's well enough, she might find it better to go back sooner, rather than later, sometimes it's better just to bury yourself in work so you don't think about it too much. Maybe a good rest for the rest of the week and see how she feels over the weekend if her Doctor is ok with that?

OYBK
I asked about school and the way the antibiotics make her they've advised not to go back and because the wound is open. They've told her bed rest and not to stress and stress will prolong the recovery time

easier said than done re stress.

fantasy here's hoping for a quick recovery now. It must have been a really stressful time for both of you.

I'm waiting for bedtime, I've been eleven hours out of the house on the first open day. I have tried very hard to model appropriate behaviour to the learner driver and not shout at the numpties that accelerated across three lanes because they were in the wrong one. I can't remember being cut up in traffic so many times in one journey.

DS was right, had I gone with plan A and dropped him at the station he would have been the only one there without a parent (some visitors had two parents in tow). There was moaning when I made him walk from the car park on his own but "I'll get lost" cuts no ice when I can see the venue from the car and he has unlimited data and Google Maps to take him to the door. It took me twenty minutes to park the car and I thought it might be a nice idea for him to be on time. He did a U turn on how totally unreasonable this was once he'd got himself through the door.

If it starts him thinking about the next stage of his education then it will have been well worth the day off college. I am now going to have a glass of something cold and alcoholic and try to not relive the three moments this afternoon where I thought I was about to become a traffic accident statistic.

Fantasy - hope your dd recovers quickly! Sounds like a painful procedure.

Ouch Knitting that sounds like a long day.
Which university was it?

Dd is currently saying she doesn't want to go to any open days anymore as she just doesn't want to miss any school.
She already knows the 5 universities she wants to apply to so says she'll just go and look at whichever ones she gets offers from next year.

I can't decide whether it's logical or daft!

Well done for surviving Knitting!!!

Lobster I think that sounds like a sensible strategy. I think dd is running out of places she would like to visit. She has three more open days lined up, one of them being the other end of the country from us, but only has four universities altogether that she is even considering and they are all likely to offer the same grade give a step result or two. It's a little bit of a worry for me.

It was the musical establishment in the Manchester area - that should be vague enough to avoid Google. DS has a list of four in total which sounds good except that only two of those are universities and I don't think that is enough to ensure that I get some sleep through the application process. It's fair enough that he's only thinking of two conservatoires, the standard is high for all of them so it's not as if you get the spread of offers that you do with university courses. He needs to be looking at more than two universities though, especially when one of them has a standard AAB offer. I'd be much more confident about AAB if I ever saw him do any work.

It is still early days, he's got three more open days lined up for June and then I'll see if I can get him to expand his thinking over the summer.

Lobster that seems logical enough to me. They will have offer holder days anyway so she might as well wait and go to those. Back in prehistory the first you saw of the place was when you turned up for the interview and that was in the days before you could look at video of the campus and accommodation.

Lobster I thinks it's sensible too.

DD has a slightly longer list, and we are going to visit some of the areas over the holidays, to get a feel of the the cities.

OYBBK my DS1 had a list like that, and in reality it was a list of 2 that he was really willing to go to. Certainly get him focussed!

Icouldbe that journey sounds horrendous!

icouldbe that does sound like an awful journey. I'm glad you survived it.

Dd hasn't really looked much at open days yet. She's still umming and ahhing about which course she wants to do, thinking physics one minute, then computing, then sometimes she fancies maths. She keeps thinking about what careers each one could lead to, but I'm encouraging choosing the course she's most interested in and thinking about her career afterwards. I'm not sure she's buying into my ideas, after all I went to uni in the stone age (actually, she was 1 when I started uni so it's really not a long time ago).

The adult service we self referred to told me today that they are definitely just for ages 18+. So I rang to make an apt with the GP, only to be told to self refer to the same service I'd just spoken to , and when I explained they won't see her I was told that I'll have to try and get an emergency/telephone appt as they don't have anything to pre book till June! It's very frustrating, and it's no wonder dd has put off doing this for so long, each phone call stresses her out, it's easier to just avoid doing it at all.

I'm through whining now. I was a cyclist there for three years and either the traffic is much worse now or being a student cyclist gave me the superpower of not really caring.

I was tidying up under the coffee table and found another prospectus that looks like it could be the insurance place so I feel much more reassured now. A list of three universities sounds much better than two.

DS1 is booked in for Keele, Lincoln, Leicester and Northampton.

It's a bit difficult to know where to pitch it, as his grades can vary between A and E.

Not going to any open days as we will not be in the UK over the summer. Ds is considering the following - Warwick, Loughborough, Leeds and LSE for accounting and finance. He is taking the IB so standard offers for these unis are between 35 and 38 points.

Lots of the open days DD is interested fall on the same day. She is hopeless at committing so that will be a huge challenge. We also need to think about how serious she is about places - I don't think she really grasps how far away some of them actually are.

We have that problem with open days. Plus they are days I work.
Getting towards a short list though now.

I think the easiest way of getting them to see how far they are is to get them to plan the rail journey. And look up where they are on a map.

Dd hasn't started her EPQ yet. Doesn't have to be in until next year apparently.

She has little or no idea where she wants to go to Uni, but is thinking along the lines of Psychology.

Are Open Days really important?

I think they are if they can get to them. Not necessarily going to loads, but by visiting a small number it can make it easier for them to know what they actually like. The unis won't care I think if they've been to them or not.

DD went to a StAndrews one last year. It had been fairly high up her list until that point. We know the town well, there is lots of family on hand for her within shouting distance, she'd even stayed in halls there once. She absolutely hated the way the open day went though, and it was enough to make her decide she didn't want to go there. Given that massive turn around, I think she is going to want to visit as many as possible, not just to see if they are somewhere she'd be happy living, but to see if there are any vibes or attitudes she doesn't like. We'll accommodate that to a point, but I did say that we'd struggle to do a whole series of places far away.

It was much easier when she wanted to do medicine. Most of the places she was keen on were London based, so we'd have easily been able to visit all of them. Not so much now, when she's looking at places as far apart as Glasgow and Bath. We'll just focus on shortening the list I think!

Dd registered for 4 open days last night. She's apparently decided it's definitely computing she wants to do, but is open to joint honours with Maths. Physics is now of the table completely, even though she is mostly enjoying the a level. Thankfully she's chosen universities reasonably close to us, but it looks like our weekends are going to be taken up with uni visits for a while.

Hi I haven't been around for a while but talk of open days has drawn me back in.
We have registered for two both some distance away. Dd wants to do maths and linguistics which seriously limits her choices. We can't get to the only other option's open day as she has an exam the afternoon before and the travel is Devon to Edinburgh! She does need to visit though because of her mobility difficulties as well as other things.
We can't do the autumn open days either for various reasons. I have tried to arrange an individual visit to accommodation but they still haven't got back to me - must chase it up.

That's a cool combination NoHaudin.