Year 12 #3: Open Days and Predicted Grades beckon

[whistl]

Yikes! The title has just hit me! It's too soon! I'm not ready!!

Thread number 2 link: https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/further_education/3443840-Year-12-2-Carols-commutes-a-few-stocking-fillers

We're more tied up with music at the moment - three concerts coming up between 2 boys! Then we have revision at Easter, then AS levels and then it all calms down again.

Music madness here too!

Yesterday, DS and his jazz ensembles played at a jazz club we used to frequent pre-children! Very deja vu-y!

Thank you for the reminder. I'd forgotten that next week is the school music concerts - two different programmes on consecutive nights and DS2 is in both.

Ah, I may have forgotten a school music concert as well...

Yes - full on music here too. Concert last Saturday and concert tomorrow. Next term is going to manic with tests, predicted grades and uni visits. And the end of Year 12!!! How did we get here so quickly?

Just got home from rehearsing with John Rutter for the concert we're singing with him in a couple of weeks.

Wow, TheFirst, was he as wonderful as my heart tells me he must be?
You are so lucky...

He is a great director, an energetic conductor and an all-round good bloke.

I sang in the stage choir for his Christmas concert series a couple of years ago, so this will be my second time performing with him.

This evening he told a great anecdote about Leonard Bernstein, who was paid for composing the Chichester Psalms with a Parker pen and a recipe for scones.

Great results for your DS @TheFirstOHN

I mentioned to DD about flipped learning and she said there's no way she'd have the time for that! To be fair she's doing well with her own methods so far so I leave her to it.

I'm after some advice/ideas please. DDs journey to college is 1hr20mins each way and she feels it's wasted time, although enjoys the social aspect! Reading on the bus makes her feel sick so she can't use her revision resources. She's taking History, Biology and Chemistry, does anyone else's DCs have recommendations for podcasts that I could suggest?

Not really able to help much with podcasts but I do like 'In our time' and 'the life scientific'!
Sympathise about reading on buses - never been able to do it myself.

Are there any Open University podcasts she could tackle?

Thanks for the tips, I'll pass them on 😀

I have sent you a PM @DevaDiva

Well DD went ypto an outreach event at Cambridge today, attending lectures from the law, history & philosophy faculties. She is genuinely enjoying the randomness the topics they cover and how they try to link everything to current affairs. Has anyone with older DC faced the bump back down to earth when they realise they will almost certainly attend a "normal" uni with 120 crammed in a lecture theatre in a concrete block watching a PowerPoint presentation? (I went to one such uni.)

Thread fell off my list but found you all again! Joined cluster and recall an email off ok bubble so will try and join you over there!

Hpe to see you over there Androbbob

Hi sticker I was worried about that for DD but if you choose carefully you can replicate some of the oxbridge type experience. Yes some courses still focu more on the huge lecture theatre selling the caliber of their lecturers. Others are more into group work and seminars. Also DD has 30 on her course in a year so smaller lectures and seminars. Lecturers also have ‘office hours ‘ which few students make use of but DD and a couple of like minded course mates have used to discuss tricky essays with a favourite lecturer. I can’t pretend it’s the same as the beautiful sorroundings and inspired teaching of oxbridge but it doesn’t have to be the other extreme either - but chose carefully. My two found offer days helpful for flushing out differences in teaching styles and access in their favoured places

Oratory I think that's a good point - also small departments anywhere can be very close-knit and supportive.
DS showed me a photo of something at school that I think was to do with law work experience. We just told him to go ahead and apply and we'll sort out the dates if he gets it!

Learning by PowerPoint goes on at university too? I did not know that. It was bad enough in secondary school.

Lecturers use PowerPoint all the time but to be fair they do a lot more than that! PowerPoint can be useful for all sorts of things as long as you don't read from it!

Is anyone else having problems getting onto cluster?

My connection keeps coming and going! I wasn't sure if it was a problem with my phone...

...that worked. Not my phone, then!

I have issues with notifications from time to time and also double posting sometimes when I use my phone for which I apologise!

I’ve just st got on but this morning a reply wouldn’t upload and earlier this afternoon nothing would load at all. Maybe it’s theirservers.