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

Thank you 272 and everyone for your endoscopy advice. Not so scary now, knowing that so many of this group have been there. DH is going to take the afternoon off so he can drive me there and back and I can have the sedation.

Welcome back Shimy

So glad it got better shimy

lovely to read all the plans for the summer. DD will have just finished Nationals before results day. School doing on line so no going in.

wouldn’t mind a break from the sport if I’m honest. Straight after exams it’s straight to comps so a different stress. Need a weekend away !

Thanks @ealingwestmum . Yes a couple of days at home are required for colonoscopy prep 😬. It wasn’t pleasant but I suffer from dodgy stomach issues so it really wasn’t as bad as I was expecting 😂. Thankfully(?) there is no obvious reason for why my bowels are so dodgy so I just have to put up with a very restrictive diet topped up with Imodium if I want to go out anywhere without a toilet nearby. It’s a pain but liveable with.

@singingstones glad your DH is taking you. You’ll have a theatre assistant will you as well as the doctor doing the procedure, the one I had last time was lovely and just sat and stroked my head.

@Shimy I’m glad things have improved. I agree that this is a lovely thread and has a different vibe to a lot of mn.

@NCTDN I hope things calm for you soon. It’s horrible when things mount up.

@singingstones @Wheresthebeach @JustHereWithMyPopcorn @272Newnames. Thanks, all and hope all the dc are coping with the exams well.

Congrats to Delph re qualification older dd (I always love a good qualification story) and Seeline.
So glad to see you back Shimy. At least he's finished. I have no idea the pain /stress you went through, but at least all of us here are sympathetic and supportive, and at least can support you through any nonsense ahead.

Of which there will be, many trials and tribulations, I'm sure. We have one more week of exams. And then my ds1 commented that he had 9 weeks till results day, (so you guys it'll be 8). He says that feels an age and he wants to know now.

On that day some will get the results they want, sail easily through to firm choice. Many will be fraught with clearing and perhaps sadly some for whom it just won't work out.

8 weeks feels like an age to me!

AI. General chat. What was supposed to have helped, had been a right mess eh?

Specifically Law A'level and Physics GCSE paper.
One of the wierd topics that will only apply to a few. Our year will be one of the few for whom AI will be used, and future years won't understand its significance.

"Advance information was meant to help focus that work, but it's all been completely undermined."

"However, much of the support for exams this year will be scrapped in 2023."

Welcome back @Shimy, I agree about the rest of MN. A few years ago I posted in the Christmas topic asking for ideas for an advent calendar for DS (as DD had spotted a Pringles one she wanted in B&M). Well, I got my arse handed to me for him being an entitled brat who expected expensive rip-off Advent calendars, their children were happy with the same picture one being re-used for 10 years etc. When in fact he wasn’t all that bothered about having one at all and it was just me wanting to treat him fairly with DD. I very rarely start threads for this reason. I hope this one carries on post-results, I am on one thread that started in 2009 and has trundled on ever since.

Congrats to @Delphigirl DD1!

Pre-results days, hmm. In 2020 for GCSEs we booked a UK holiday cottage that we have been to several times throughout the DCs childhood and is much loved, coming back the day before results, when I told DS I was doing that he was so pleased, it was a great distraction, although stress levels still got a bit high on the last couple of days with all the govt backpeddling on algorithms etc. Then after results he and a friend went to Nandos. Not sure this year, sadly the holiday cottage has been sold so that’s not an option, but I am thinking about taking the Weds off work as well as the Thurs (he gets results online at home). I am hoping the re-start of the football season a couple of weeks before will prove to be a good distraction. DD has to go to school for her GCSEs so I have taken that day off too.

so DS has his final exam Fri morning - he then hops on a train and goes with a friend to a Greenday concert in London on Fri night and to the Red Hot Chili Peppers on Sunday (staying with big sis) so that’s his celebration! We bought one of the tickets, he bought the other.

That’s a great celebration planned Delphi, almost old skool, love it.

DD finishes on Friday, and Prom is Friday night, so there will be plenty of celebrations there!

Results wise, we've also booked a UK holiday cottage but will return in time for results. Both DH and I will be home on results day. DD has to go into school to collect them. I'm hoping she will agree to one of us going with her. I expect she'll go out with her friends afterwards though!

Oh that sounds good Delph. Killers we're good last week. My male friend suggested we go and see this wierd up-and-coming band GreenDay in a pub in Cambridge 1998? before they were big, and Basketcase is still one of my most favourite songs.

@Delphigirl well done to your DD, makes you realise that everyone has a different journey in education/work etc
@Monkey2001 that sounds like a great idea, I will have a look to see if there’s anything near us. DS is a pure gym addict too.
DS did biology AQA, said there were a few very strange questions but he thinks it was alright. He has 3 left and chemistry is his worst paper, so he’s fretting about that.
love the fact there nearly all finished, now it’s just the long wait for results.

Just checking in and catching up. @Shimy - nice to have you back :-). Ds has 2 more exams (maths and comps sci) and dd has three: feels so strange to have the end in sight! Both of mine are talking about working in one way or other over the summer but nothing has been organised… family holiday before results days. Must book those days off actually…

@ealingwestmum -he is an old skool heavy rock drummer with the endless broken drumsticks to prove it! Heartbroken when Taylor Hawkins died. @Oblomov22 no way! I will tell him… how big (small) was the crowd?
@sazzy5 thanks - yes they just need to find their thing. She tanked A levels, didn’t meet firm or insurance choices, had a hair raising clearing day (not helped by the fact that only about 5 unis do her subject) and eventually talked her way into her insurance choice again by going direct to the professor who had interviewed her and pleading her case. In hindsight that uni was better for her than her firm would have been. Once there, she flew.
they get there in the end.

@oblomov he says do you mean 1998, or 1988?

I can't remember Delphi, I'll have to go back and check my CV, it's the only way I can recall where I was in what year, all those years ago.
But I was definitely in Shelford south of Cambridge, and we went locally to a small pub? Maybe a couple of hundred people?

Agree it is a lovely thread and hope we can keep it going throughout whatever they all end of doing over the next few years 😊

ED, shimy can certainly tell you what happened once when she started a thread about backpacks....

Don't forget we have to keep this thread going until Casper gets into Oxford!

Absolutely. We have no guide Casper through his non AI GCSE's and A'levels.

Indeed 😂

The summer plans all sound lovely. Yes it would be great to keep this thread going - the rest of MN seems to have got a bit more aggressive over the years. I'm convinced there are more men on here now, just saying stuff to wind everyone up.

DD is still not feeling great at all. I hope it's exhaustion/heat/stress. She's resting. I won't lie - I'm beyond stressed that she'll be sick for the last week of exams - she's 3 so it's her biggest week and Chemistry which is her worst subject.

Delphi What a great outcome for your DD. That's real determination and grit. You must be very proud.

I vaguely remember the back pack thread…

More than likely all 3 Wheresthebeach, really hope the rest (for as long as you can get her to do so) will help recharge a touch to get her over the line.

@Piggywaspushed did you get to the bottom of the NI expiry date?!

Hope dd feels better before Monday @Wheresthebeach . Dd was unwell the week she had 3 and I was really worried but I think adrenaline carried her through.