Year 13 2024 - General support thread part 2

[Rollergirl11]

All welcome as our young people head in to their last full term before the summer exams. Between UCAS applications, receiving offers/rejections, learning to drive and taking driving tests, revising for mocks and sitting them the pace hasn’t let up for our DC.

This thread has been a lovely supportive and immensely helpful place to talk as we guide our DC’s through this challenging time!

Old thread here https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/further_education/4851165-year-13-20232024-general-support-thread?page=40&reply=132323436

Glad to hear your DS is doing well Lego and hope the universities let him carry the offers over.

Half term here DD was at work on Saturday and Sunday and revising today. Keeps coming out desperate for food, urgently needing a croissant this morning and urgently needing veg bolognese for lunch. We went swimming on Friday and to RHS Wisley gardens on Saturday, just house things last couple of days. Glad to have a week exam free though currently DS is back to watching TV at max volume on repeat whilst making lots of cheese toasties and lots of Frosties bizarrelly with DDs oat milk as well as normal meals. No idea how he stays stick thin.

Dd has had some kind of hives for the past couple of days although they seem to have calmed down now. Was giving her problems sleeping at night so she was worn out in the day too and hasn’t done much revision so far as she just couldn’t manage it.

Today she is back to revising and has major revising grumpiness. Have to keep reminding myself that we all react to stressful things in different ways and hers is to be very grumpy!

@MirandaWest - that sounds horrible. Glad the hives have settled down.

Revision grumps here too. Ds has lost a bit of motivation but wants no help to try and find it again! 🤣

Good to hear from you @legosnowqueen. Has your DS made the transition in to Year 12 now? How is that going?

DD had the weekend off from revision but has been back on it yesterday and today. Can’t believe that tomorrow is Wednesday and already halfway through half term. At the end of next week she will be 1 subject down and just 3 exams left.

DD has been revising Mon to Wed after weekend working punting. She is quite cheerful but has struggled a bit with her brother being noisy watching the TV on max volume but she is happy that he's doing things and we got her noise cancelling headphones which work well. She says she keeps dreaming he can talk again and think she is really hoping for that. He keeps making cheese toasties and taking her oat milk to have with Frosties so we are having to get industrial quantities.

She is going on holiday in the summer with her boyfriend and then with friends interrailing late August think she said they are visiting Berlin, Paris, Prague, Vienna, few others, its with boys from her old school 3 schools back. Think with her boyfriend its an AI in Canaries but not booked yet. Then she will work in punting job inbetween. 3 exams next week and then 1 following week and then last one on 20th.

Glad everyone's making it through half term ok.

Ds went out with some friends yesterday to play tennis then two of them came back here and they did physics revision together.

He has two exams for the next two weeks and then FOUR in the last week including two chemistry exams! Why do they do this? There's plenty of time over which to stretch exams - I thought they only did one exam per subject per week in case of illness.

A shaky few days Mon/Tue but she seems to be back on track today. I'm having to head off for a funeral taking 5 days, so dad in sole charge and while he is really supportive of her, sometimes they fall out in a very bad way and so I'm worried, just hope they can both manage not to behave like toddlers while I'm away, for exams' sake. Fingers crossed but it can't be helped.

I’m sorry @GreatWorldAtlas - never a good time for a funeral but hopefully DD and DH will manage to get along together while you’re away.

DD seems a bit more perky - she was up relatively early to have a walk this morning before getting stuck into the Russians.

DS came back from his first year at uni yesterday - is nice having him back although he is currently doing a report that should have been submitted by 12 today so will have lost 5% for that….He was last seen at the kitchen table creating his report.

Sorry about the funeral Great

Glad your DD has perked up Miranda

4 in the last week is annoying QueenMabby seems to depend what subjects they take.

DD has booked her holiday with her boyfriend today and they are off to Kefalonia in the end. I asked her which airport it was departing from bearing in mind it was her who booked it and got a I don't know I never looked. Then I said well it is a London one isn't it? No idea she replies I hope so but I will have a look. Luckily it is the nearest airport to us. She is currently off out at the cinema with a friend then they are going to a vegan restaurant as her boyfriend sensibly refused to go to a vegan restaurant. Then back to revision.

@QueenMabby similar here: one exam before half term then three weeks with four exams each week. 😣

Dd is going to London with 6 friends for 5 days in July.

DD hit a wall yesterday and couldn’t self motivate. We sat down this morning and went through everything she needs to cram before Monday (she is frontloaded next week) , it’s range and importance and she has a priority list and schedule now. That, combined with the smell of banana bread baking, has calmed her and she’s ploughing on. I expect there will still be tears and panic on Sunday night.

We are off on family hols first before DD goes with 8 friends to Greece. DS OTOH has 4 holidays booked! Life of Riley.

@legosnowqueen I hope DS hears soon if Durham will accept a deferral. Fingers crossed.

@Penguinsa love Kefalonia! Many happy memories, went there when I was pregnant with DS.

DD is struggling to keep up revision momentum this week. More interested in booking her Greek island trip with her besties in July. I'm not convinced that a pause (for half-term) at this stage is helpful.

Also, trying to get back into her job groove, as she's been on pause from it for about six weeks. Hoping for some shifts towards the end of next week. Thinking she should get another job lined up, as she's on a zero-hours contract, and her whole work 'model' (to help with three months of SE Asian travel before starting uni in 2025) relies on her working four to five shifts a week (to my mind, an ask).

DS also slowed on momentum. We had a frank chat about this yesterday he listened resignedly while I ranted. .

A few of his friends use the Flora app so he's downloaded this too. He also has two friends both doing maths and physics who are happy to tandem revise. They are currently doing a timed maths paper 1 "together" over FaceTime.

Ds has had a couple of lacklustre days too. He seems to work better earlier in the day then loses focus later in the afternoon or say's he's too tired to continue. I think it's more boredom than tiredness. He's trying to aim for 6 hours daily - 4 hours of revision then a 2 hour past paper. Scores on past papers for the sciences and single maths are good. FM a lot spikier. He has four exams next week, 3 the week after and 4 in the last week so the bulk of the exams still to do.

He's meeting friends later today to plan a summer camping trip and then going to the gym.

DD has also found it very hard to keep on and on revising through half term. At least she had the satisfaction of finishing a whole A level last Friday (Geography is now done!), but has then found it very hard to knuckle down this week, where it really needs to be biology, biology and biology, for the first paper next Wednesday. But having nothing for 10 ten days, after that first burst has meant she also has really taken her foot off the pedal. She has a friend downstairs at the moment and they are supposedly revising biology, but every time I come down they are cooking something instead.

Much the same story here except six hours and past papers daily sounds like an amazing aspiration! It's been a very long week (all of us working at home) and feels a bit like lockdown tbh. Three more this coming week then one the last week!

Similar story here. Could see from the week of study leave before his exams started that 2-3 days of concentrated study was his limit, so we kind of worked that in to his revision plan. He had Thursday after his exam off and he and a friend went to the darts at the O2 and did other fun stuff around London on the Friday. He worked reasonably hard on the Saturday and Sunday and then did a relief shift at work on BH Monday. Back to study until a full work shift on Thursday. We are now on day 4 of study - but he does have 2 exams tomorrow and 6 in total between now and Tuesday 11th, so even he knows he has to knuckle down. He will still have 2 exams in the final week, but the workload will be very much reduced.

He already has a week trip with his friends in July in a caravan in Norfolk and almost ready to book a trip to Rome and a Pompei in early September. The plan to book a cottage near Durham for a week before he starts is still in place but there will be less of a boot camp element if he keeps the St John’s element as he won’t have to cook for himself.

Psychology now done here today and seemed OK but maths tomorrow, at least its also in the afternoon. So 5 down, 4 to go. Having a takeaway Thai and pizza to keep her going. Another on Thurs then much more civilised one a week for 2 weeks.

DD now has callouses on her finger from writing so much 😩

BUT

She is 2/3 of the way through now. 6 down, 3 to go….

DD is a third of the way through. Will be half way through after Wednesday and 5/6 of the way through by Friday evening

Still so near the beginning here! One down and 8 still to go! Two this week and two next and then FOUR in the last week! I just want it all to be over.

We are two down, 11 to go.
further maths today was hard but doable apparently and it’s maths again tomorrow.

Barely started here too @QueenMabby , 2 down, 7 to go. Three this week on consecutive days starting tomorrow. I think DS's revision productivity dropped off a lot last week, though he went into schoo, today which I think is better for him. I'm counting down the days now.

@ShanghaiDiva Ds said FM was a tougher paper than the first one but he thought it was OK. I look at the questions and think they are impossibly hard!