Thread 32 - Corona Cohort 'May' the Mumsnet force be with them for their venture to exams

[OrangeCinnamonCroissant]

This is a thread for supporting all young people post GCSEs 2020, regardless of their educational setting. It is respectfully requested that all are supportive and helpful to each other. If you want to start a debate, e.g state vs private, please don't within this thread. Please also be sensitive when responding to threads about grades.

Some of us have been here since first thread back in yr10, some will be new. Everyone has been friendly and helpful in the past. Everyone is welcome. It is hoped this will continue.

Our DS/DD may go down various paths (such as employment, apprenticeships, higher ed) We have decided for anyone interested they will most likely find us within the Further Ed board.

Previous Thread 31

CONGRATULATIONS ZEBRACAT !

Dd feels similarly about the American history option @JustHereWithMyPopcorn . Basically history is huge compared to other subjects! But as I said to dd earlier, you’ll never know everything and you don’t need to either. It’s about constructing a coherent argument with the facts you know.

@Monkey2001 definitely an ADHD thing! Ds was the same one day last week, then there was a huge traffic hold up and I was stressing whilst he calmly revised his history! Think he got in at 9.05!

@ProggyMat sorry about the horrid bit in the Greek paper yesterday - at least it is only 1 section in 1 paper. Also, from memory the CAT exam for Greek was fairly horrendous and your DD obviously did really well in that. Fingers crossed - I feel like our DC are in parallel so feel very invested in your DD.

Best of luck to everyone today. History sounds like a massive work load.
Monkey that sounds insanely stressful. You did well to stay calm.

The ICU thread is heart breaking. Just wandered downstairs to hug DD.

Yes physics today for us. I'm avoiding that ICU thread - I know I couldnt take reading it.

Re: thread about boy in ICU. Absolutely heartbreaking. The OP could be one of us on this thread?? Under a different name. Her poor DS is 18yrs like ours so it’s not far fetched to think he is in the middle of his A’level exams.
Just awful. I’m praying for a miracle.

Ds has history this morn. He is doing the Stuart's. He said there were lots of choices for teachers as to which subjects they chose for history. That makes it complicated with different papers.

I had a really bad night....blocked nose, headache, took my temp this morning, it was 39° so I did a covid test. It was positive. I am amazed to have come this far without catching it. We had a get together of dh's cousins Sunday. Apparently one of them tested positive Tuesday. I sat next to him for an hour or so, on a pub bench, so I was close. I didn't tell the dc's. Neither of them are showing signs yet. Dh is negative so will go to the award ceremony without me. I will get them to test tomorrow before school. Thankfully Ds has time to catch it and get better before his exams as it's half term.

I phoned work and they wanted me in, they said I can wear a mask. But I said I wasn't well enough. That would be irresponsible to give it people in the shop.

I hope Ds gets on ok and all the others taking exams. For Ds it'll be good to get the first one out the way.

I was doing a bit of 'testing' DS's knowledge yesterday. Even his condensed typed notes on each section is a huge amount of information/data. I genuinely sat there thinking 'how the hell can anyone remember all of this!!' I hope it goes OK as this is the big paper in terms of content, fingers crossed for them.

It really, really is! I thought Biology was a lot but History is mad.

It's very sad @Shimy the poor mother on that thread. I hope she gains some comfort from reading the posts.
I'm praying that her son recovers - from a very lapsed Catholic here
Sorry Shimy, I wasn't insinuating yesterday that you were in anyway secretive re. your sons Adhd 💗

Ds2 appears to be very laid-back over his Chemistry GCSE tomorrow. Although he tells me he's doing lots of revision at school, I can't see much going on at home.

I didn't realise the history exam is 2.5 hours. That's a long exam.

Ican hope it's mild and your DS avoids it.

DS and I went through a Chem past paper yesterday, Cantonet and we marked it as we went along. I was panicking because we both found parts of it tough but he would have got a high 8, so it goes to show that you can get a good grade from aceing the lower mark parts and getting some of the marks in the 5 and 6 markers.

I was a bit horrified when DS told me they hadn’t done any past papers at school - so much of it is knowing precisely what the examiner is looking for, and past papers really help to build up a picture of key words to use.

Sorry to hear your Covid news ican. Hope it's really mild for you.

DH and I were talking about exam length last night. I did history A level and all mine were 3 hours, but this is DD’s longest one! The other history seem to be 1 hour or 1.5!

History teacher on Twitter seems pleased with USSR.

DS should be coming out of Britain exam soon. He stopped revising at about 4 yesterday because he said he knew it all and no point keeping going over it. It's his favourite topic.

Ooh, who is that, @Piggywaspushed ? I will look on Twitter!

waiting for DD to come out now…!

Dd was still revising at 11.30 last night (she started in the library at 9am) and got up at 5 this morning to keep going… surely she must know enough for it to have gone ok? Waiting to hear.. I think she’ll come home and sleep!

Jonathan Mountstevens appu.

DS home and claiming it was 'light work'! 🤔 God, I hope he's right!

Phew! Dd also said it was much better than expected. That’s a relief!

@Horace123 Thanks! And me too with your DS.
DD says the verse was worse than the CAT! Her teachers haven’t seen the paper yet but will give their feedback once they have sight of it.
As you say it was half of a paper worth 25% of the overall grade- keeping fingers crossed it hasn’t set the tone for the rest of the Greek papers!

@crazycrofter I'm now worrying that if everyone found it 'easy' what will happen with the boundaries?? 😧

@Alsoplayspiccolo dd also said she's not done full practice papers and I was really shocked. She has no idea how to manage time for a 3 hour exam.

DD just trying a gcse chemistry past paper now, cue full meltdown..
She is doing fine and has all day to plug the little holes in her knowledge but she's so on edge it doesn't take much to upset her. 10 more papers to go after this one and the end can't come soon enough tbh.

Gower Brownies arrived for ds1. I felt duty bound to taste test the middle one, which is the squishiest, for safety purposes only. Wouldn't want another Spurs Lasagne-gate.