Thread 34 Covid Cohort - Heat 'Waving' DC to final exams and drinking more

[OrangeCinnamonCroissant]

...water

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. It's all relative!

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 continue down various pathways ( employment, apprenticeships, higher ed) We have decided for anyone interested they will find a thread within the Further Ed board.

Possibly a move to Parent of Adult Children Board in future? Post Results?

Previous Thread

Thanks for the new thread, funny to think that this is the one exams will actually finish on!
Thinking of all those sitting them in this heat today.

Ahh welcome @TantrumsAndBalloons How exciting but terrifying, my sister lives that way.

Hello Tantrums. How very exciting and scary in equal measures of his imminent moving out!

I feel so sorry for them taking exams in this heat. Good luck to all!

Hello to newbies and returners!

Blue a bucket??? They put a bucket out for her. That doesn't seem reasonable to me.

Singing good luck with everything, sedation is a good idea.

Delphi - In the same boat - three next week. Feels very 'dragging out' and hard. DD has realised she will be the last person sitting exams in her school on Friday as she's the only one with extra time. So she will be alone in the hall...

ICan hope it all gets sorted for your DS with flying.

Trains decided to add to our stress this morning. Signal failure, so cancellations and delays. We did, again, a run for the car. I wasn't keen as I figured the London rush hour traffic would be terrible but with the heat we decided that it was a better option than DD being stuck on a train being held up. Seems we've been doomed with the trains recently. In the end the traffic was okay, and at least she arrived cool! An hour long round trip though, and will do again for pick up.

@icanbewhatiwant the 10 day rule is on page page I linked before in the "do not travel if....." bit, but it is not clear whether that is guidance or law. The rule saying no tests required only changed on 12th, so the last few days. I only picked it up because I am on a FB thread for parents of students at St Andrews which has a lot of American parents so they discuss travel a lot. Here is the link again www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/international-travel/index.html

@Oblomov22 and Harry Styles people, I hope the weather looks more promising for you than it does in Bristol. DH's birthday picnic had been rained off.

Weather looks ok in London on Sunday at the moment. I have to admit that I'm not actually going, DD's friend's mum is taking the pair of them. DD bought a nice dress yesterday but was panicking about how expensive it was, she didn't realise the price until she went to pay. I was fearing the worst at this point in the story, but it was £39 😅 I was honestly expecting £100+, she was so worried about it.

DS is half way through biology 🤞🤞 and is going to the beach later. Just applied maths to go for him after today.

Can't believe we're four pages in to a new thread before I saw it! 😂

@icanbewhatiwant keeping fingers crossed for a clear test for the America trip. I'm a bit worried hearing about new Covid strains, can we just be done now with it pleeeeease.

DS has Bio 2 today and I know he's dreading it. I hope it's not a bad one. He told me he stayed awake last night trying to work out his marks for History and Literature (he still has another history paper to go) he's hoping he's scraped enough for an A but he's clearly getting anxious.

@ealingwestmum I had the same thing when I was younger, I have a terrible gag reflex and spent the entire time retching. I get stress acid now whihc is usually knocked on the head with a dose of proton pump inhibitors. Good luck with your tests @singingstones.

Hope everyone has nice things planned for the weekend, DS2 is away on a school trip now and was so excited this morning when I dropped him off.

Biology was "not horrific" according to DS. Onwards and upwards (to the beach, but maybe some maths revision later).

Yes there seems so much covid about. I know more people with it now than I've know throughout the whole thing. They said on our local news that cases are very high at over 100 per 100,000. But where are they getting data? There is no where to report tests and people don't have to test. Perhaps the strains will get weaker and weaker. Apparently Ds1 tested negative this morn. when he comes home today or tomorrow I'll make sure he's doing it properly. I have done 5 washing machine loads of dirty clothes of his, apparently there's more 🙈

JustHere, it’s such a ridiculous phobia to have isn’t it? I pay extortionate fees at dentist to have an X-ray vs biting onto a card, and haven’t actually thrown up since I was 21 (very close but never quite), but sit sobbing quietly in a bathroom corner for hours with freezing cold water running over my wrists to stop it happening.

DS says this Bio paper was better than Paper 1 as it stuck much more closely to the AI. He seems happy enough. Only two exams more to go..

@ealingwestmum oh god, I can't do the biting the x-ray card thing either but they just make me - I didn't realise there was an alternative? I have thrown up many, many times over the years sadly - at least twice this year - my stomach is my weakness. I have a stash of travel sickness tablets in my bedside table ready for the inevitable hours of nausea trying to stave off actually being sick. I hate it.

I'm in the dog house as I miscalculated the finish time of bio and having arranged to pick DD up afterwards, she had to ring me to see where I was. It was only to stop her having to get the bus/train home in 31 degree heat... Consequently I'm not sure I've got a true picture of the exam. It was 'OK' - not much of the main AI topic listed (OCR), and lots that wasn't AI (which she hadn't really looked at). Oh well - a whole week to learn paper 3.

That sounds horrible JustHere, I haven’t had to use those tablets since my ulcer in my 20’s. The X-ray works by rotating around you, probably not something all dentists have.

NCT, HarrietD, hope Spanish went ok for your DDs, mine seemed ok from her one liner text of 2 words. Clearly following restrictive word rules from her exam :)

I don’t have gag/reflux issues generally, but find those bite x-ray things horrendous, they do make me gag.

Day off for DD after 5xGCSE in 4 days. She has only just woken up. Picking DS up from boarding later, he phoned me on Weds and said he had been working flat out this week, then his history teacher caught me yesterday (I had to pop into the school for something, I’m on the Friends committee) and said he was concerned DS would burn out if he carries on the way he is, and to make sure he gets a proper break this weekend. So two undisturbed lie-ins, my parents visiting, we will go out for a bit to eat on Sat night and football on Sunday, when thankfully it should be cooler.

Biology (AQA) for DS was fairly horrific, especially a 5 mark question but the marking scheme is always weird and grade boundaries low so he reckons he might have anything from 30-70 marks, i.e. a D to an Astar. Must be patient now!

Fast moving thread - which is to be expected during the heat of exams I suppose!

Ds just back from paper 2 Biology (OCR) and felt it went better than paper 1 so grounds for optimism. I have ordered him to have the rest of the day off and leave revision for now and resume tomorrow. He can't sustain the level of cramming work he has been doing wihout a few hours off at least.

How did everyone else's exams go today?

Hopefully your ds has done better than he thinks in that tricky paper Chewbecca

Politics paper 3 was terrible apparently. He didn't finish and the extract question was weird and stupid. He's just told me Warwick is better than Nottingham anyway so its not all bad (he's been to Warwick uni once, to play football when he was 14, against England girls so he was quite distracted - I'm not sure he could locate it on a map
Two more to go.....

DD is out of Spanish and really happy with the questions. Big relief! Hope all the other exams have gone well today.

DD says Biology OCR was good. However she's come out with a sore throat and bad headache so has gone to bed. Her asthma has been worse in the heat, so hoping its pollen, stress and heat rather than anything else.

More kids with Covid in her year - one sent home when she arrived in school and was clearly sick.

AQA Biology didn’t go as well as hoped but like @Chewbecca said, it could go either way. She needs a B.

Yes my DS says he thinks it was better than paper 1, and he finished it, but he didn’t sound as though it was brilliant by any means. Still, that’s over. 3 to go.
min other news my 24yo DD1 has just passed her professional exams and is now a chartered surveyor! Amazing! So proud of her 💕

Wow congrats to her Delphi!

DS is in a similar position to others re uncertain papers / grade boundaries, he could get anything from AstarAstarA to DDD. He's also terrible at predicting how well he's done. August is going to be very stressful. He thinks he'll get AAA and will sail into his firm but I wouldn't be surprised if it was more like BBC and scraping into his insurance.

Thanks @singingstones. She is a dude. Who tanked her A levels BTW and now has a degree, a masters, and professional quals… so they find their way!

I will be on my knees thanking the good lord if DS gets BBC 🤣