Is it too early for an A level support thread!

[HereWeGo2023]

Hello all, apologies if there is already a thread but I can’t find one.
May had finally rolled around and the first exam is a mere 2 weeks away. Exam stress has hit our house! It’s feels like everything is about waiting at the moment - waiting for the predicted grades, waiting for the uni offers, waiting for the exams to start, and then the long wait for the results!
This is our youngest DD but the first one in further education so would love to chat to other parents going through this

I feel sorry for them with the stress. DS has come out in Hives rash today and it is probably stress - lots of itching, going to the pharmacy for something in a mo. His eye seems red with it too, maybe conjunctivitis.

He had psychology yesterday and biology tomorrow so luckily not an exam today.

DD has been keeping styes at bay with medical eye wipes and I think is a sign of her stress levels. I heard her tossing in her bed during the night and she says she slept fine, but I really didn’t. DH had this flu like bug that’s being doing the round last week and I am normally not bothered with germs but at the moment I am paranoid about DD going down with something.

Last Classical Civilisation paper this afternoon. It is her least favourite paper but at least after today that will one subject complete. Then other papers on Thursday and Friday for history and English. Then a week’s break until final English exam on Friday next week.

Good luck everyone this week. My DD has the geography 2 paper today. She has been really nervous all morning but is in there now so hopefully it’s going well.
It feels like she has taken a million exams but this one only marks the halfway point!

The pharmacist gave some Piriton for the hives but now stressed DS out as told him to go to A&E for some kind of injection (cortisone) if it doesn't improve in 2 hrs. I think he seems OK in himself so this might be a bit OTT but at leat A&E does have a kind of walk in GP part so might not be waiting ages.

Geography paper 2 for DD this morning. It's her favourite paper so I really hope the questions are kind to her. US politics tomorrow which she is dreading and environmental science on Friday. She'll be just glad to see the back of that one. This feels like round 2 after a week long break for half term. The momentum has gone and she's focussed on prom, shopping, summer.....

DS2 heading off for maths this afternoon (OCR - had a panicky five minutes when I saw other people posting about maths paper yesterday but OCR seems to have a different timetable). He seems serene - fingers crossed he feels the same afterwards! Good luck to everyone

I think it was Further Maths yesterday - I’m pretty sure all the English exam boards will have Maths this afternoon.

This was my take too

Yy @WarningToTheCurious he's doing FM too but didn't have an exam yesterday. I've given up trying to understand the intersection of different modules and exam boards tbh!

Ah, right, it is confusing when the schools have chosen different modules!

DD home from her second English Lit paper (CCEA) and that’s her first subject done. It’s a weird feeling - esp as we always thought she’d go on to do English at uni, and even up until the last day before study leave, her English teacher was trying to persuade her to make changes her to applications for CAO (Irish universities) to add in an English option - I think he couldn’t bear her not to carry on with the subject she has such an affinity for. I can’t quite believe she’s done with it now.

She said it went well and others seem to concur. Coming out so positively after every exam makes me nervous though, even though her reasoning for being confident and happy makes total sense - she dissects the papers afterwards and I understand why she was happy with the questions, but I still worry she’s missing something!

DS said Geography Edexcel was ok apart from a dodgy 20 marker on health and human rights which he is now obsessing over and trawling Student Room for answers. I have told him to leave it and move on as he has Politics tomorrow.

Dd said Geography 2 from AQA was really horrible!

Another DD here saying AQA geography was awful. Not enough time so rushed through the last section and misread one of the questions. It's usually her strongest paper so she's not happy.

DS has come out of pure maths 1 reasonably positive. His problem can be with silly errors and I guess if he made those he won’t know so fingers crossed this will be a good start to the maths papers for him. I think he is more worried about mechanics and statistics.

DD slightly better about maths today than further maths, but knows she did 2 questions wrong and didn't have time to go back, so still upset and doesn't think she's done that well. It's not helping her when other candidates are coming out saying it was easy. Although, I used to be a teacher and in my experience the easier a pupil thinks a paper is, the worse they've done. I think they don't notice tricky bits put in there to throw them.

@astuz I remember focusing on the questions that went wrong when I came out of exams but two questions isn’t very many from the whole paper. I’m sure your DD will be fine. Hard to reassure them though.

@astuz DS just got back from AQA Maths Paper 1 and said it was "well nice" so hopefully it was the same for your daughter after her Further Maths ones 😀

DS2 happy with maths (OCR). On to the next physics paper on Friday and then crunch week next week with four papers. Hope your DD feels better once the stress has passed @astuz

DS just gone from final Classics exam, only 2 history papers to go.

Said it was the hardest so far but still ok, he’s pretty chipper

Edexel maths a fair paper apparently. Few tricky areas but overall went reasonably well.

Ds said maths went well. He needs an A star so fingers crossed all good

Dd finally home! Her friendship group spent the afternoon having fun together. She was happy with the geography paper this morning.
That's her exams finished now.

Wow, what a lovely feeling that must be - 23rd June feels like a long way off for us. Hope your DD enjoys celebrating.

It's bloody brilliant. She's the youngest as well so I never have to support another young person through them. Whatever the results, we are proud of her.