Fighting our way through 1st year uni (starting Sept 17)

[HSMMaCM]

Continuing the previous thread.

Exams, assessments, essays, etc.

Support, or lack of it.

Will they all get accommodation for next year and can they cook a balanced meal yet.

DD is home for a minor op. She's staying tonight for some TLC, then we'll drive her back tomorrow.

She just got an assignment back with a 68% mark, so she's happy with that.

DS (Engineering, 9-5 3 days a week, 9-6 and 9-1 the two other days) is friendly, but quite anxious, likes a drink but not to excess and hates clubbing. Luckily his university has quite a number of quiet, mixed sex flats and it’s been ideal for him. If he had had to put up with what some of your DCs have, I don’t think he would have coped.

He’s currently getting in a panic about looming exams. They had a test last week which he did quite a bit of work for and he said it was a disaster. Luckily everyone else said the same thing!

Well it looks like my DD (and me back in the 80s) is the only one on this thread that likes clubbing! She generally only goes once or twice a week though whereas I would have been 3 or 4 times BUT clubs shut at 2 back in my day! And it's not a new thing for her - not a case of her being dull at school but wild now - she is fairly well rounded!

She and her flatmates do loads of stuff together, but she also has other friends from her course or from home and they do stuff other than partying too. Including studying - she spends a lot of time in the library and works as well as plays hard.

Like I said, each to their own, but surely it would be better to enable students to live with others who are broadly on the same wavelength.

DD goes clubbing about once a week, but she's not a big drinker and likes quiet time too. She's lucky that the regular clubbers in her house are considerate and they think about their neighbours. She says another house has several very loud people.

Halls leaving parties going on now/next week.... so quickly all over (I think they hold them before exams as some people disappear after exams are over).

How is everyone? It was a bit odd having a Bank Holiday weekend with BBQ, friends over etc and DS being absent. Much to his annoyance he had an exam on Saturday morning but two more to go and he is done. I suppose he will call us at some stage to arrange for us to drive up and transport all his junk back home for the summer, heaven knows where we will store it.

Same here ono. Some family birthdays too & was weird without DS.

His exams don't start until end of May, so a little while until we have to transport him and stuff back for the Summer 🙂

Lots of exams and multiple trips to collect things soon.

Some of the halls of residence are quite hot which doesn't help. Need tips for keeping rooms cool.

DD has an exam Friday.

She messaged us to say all the students had their sheets and towels laid out on the car park, to dry in the sun and save drying fees. None of them seemed to think to take a clothes horse outside.

Good luck to everyone in exams. One of mine has 7 he says. Not sure when they start.

I don't think I will be doing any collecting as they have a car down there, but we do have a visit lined up in a couple of weeks' time, which wil be nice; last visit whilst they are in halls. Time flies.

Sheets drying outside - at least they are washing them and it is certainly very hot indeed.

Exams the week after next for DD. She is putting her stuff in storage with a friend in Bristol as the halls tenancy ends a week before the house contract begins. So we are saved (I hope!) from trekking back and forth at the end of June.

HSM, surely they would have ended up dirtier than before washing?

I'm looking forward to a trip to visit DD after her exams, even though it will be a long drive. Am hoping to stay two nights so we can have a day in the middle to go and have an ice-cream on the beach and that sort of thing.
Need to talk to her about timings and get something booked.
Thinking of going mid-week for better availability and price of hotel.
She has three exams one for each module, very similar to what she had in January ( but different modules) She seemed to cope with that well so am not too worried for her but just hoping it goes well :-)
More concerned about DS GCSE's which start next week!

Looks like DD won't be home till mid September - the plan now is that she'll go straight from uni to her work placement. Probably better that way, and we'll help transport her and also have a bit of summer hols over where she is.

Meanwhile, evidence of a bit of relaxation amid working very hard (8 supervisions plus normal full timetable next week) ahead of exam season. Not as the DM would have it (in a piece on students having a rather jolly big bank holiday picnic spun as a 'debauched day') the start of the drinking season. There's a photo of her rucksack next to two pals (who had actually drunk very little) having a nice nap in the sunshine.

DS came home for the weekend mainly for some peace to work as he reckoned the sun was causing people to party harder.

He has two pieces of work to submit this week and a workshop next week and then he is done.
No exams for him.

He has no plans for the summer at all apart from a family holiday in June.

The photographic evidence was actually in the DM, in case that wasn't clear .

At least the rucksack is getting its five minutes of fame.

BTM they may have been dirtier, but at least they were washed .

DD gets the keys to her new house next week. Shame about the 1.5 months double rent, but it's a lovely place.

She's home for the hairdresser this weekend. She doesn't like change.

Mine has got four exams over two weeks, her course has the other end of year exams in January so she's already finished those. She's staying a few extra days to have an end of exams social and then she's home for the whole summer apart from a holiday with her boyfriend's family. They don't get the keys for the new place until the start of September.

DD's first exam is next week. She said she is confident about passing, but plans plow on with the revision because she wants to do well.

I think she was a bit surprised to see how everyone, even the big drinkers and drug takers, have turned studious in exam season. Instead of going clubbing, they had a poker night in her flat.

I spolke to one of my mine yesterday (he needed files from his home PC put on google drive - I think it must be part of his A level course relevant to a current topic as he's doing the same subject at university) and he seemed fine. he is not thinking the exams will go very well but other work he's done has been okay. I said it doesn't matter.

Reading and scanning my university diaries over the last 2 weeks you can see how it all seems to important at the time but 30 years on you can see it wasn't worth all the angst. Things tend to work out okay one way or the other. Although my relief in year 3 when I actually got a job offer after 139 applications and 25 interviews in London (I must be the worst interview candidate in history) is nice to read after all those years and I did put in a lot of effort. I hope my two can realise how much work you have to put into getting jobs then and now and they don't just drop into your lap from the magic jobs fairy on your final year. My tutor thought it was because I was still 19 at the first term of my third year I might not have been getting offers which might have been so (I was a year young). I was 20 when I did get the job offer.

Pilar, I think plenty get on with some work when exams are in prospect. I hope no one is disturbing anyone else. I am now in diaries in my post grad year and seem to be disurbing housemates as I have a bath at 8am which is hardly early but it is very difficult when people work on different time cycles I suppose. I've always been a morning person.

Wow, that's an impressive and inspiring effort you put into getting your first job Xenia.
Definitely a lesson in that for all our DC.

Am really looking forward to going to see DD at the end of term. Hope I can still catch some of the Uni spirit and meet a couple of her hall friends.
Will have to get the timing right before everyone has gone home!
Will be my reward for getting through GCSE's with DS which start on Monday :O

I can empathise with the job hunting Xenia, jobs were not easily come by for graduates during the early part of the 80’s. I think I did a similar number of applications.

Xenia, that is impressive. DS go nowhere with some summer intern applications so we organised some interview traing for him. It seemed to help, well he got to final part of a five stage process with his first choice employer and apparently passed the assessment, but no place. He is opting for a PhD instead. Problem deferred! They are going into a tough employment environment.

DD says her new flat is 'eerily quiet'. The only complaint in several weeks has been about stolen salami. Paradise compared with before. She has a week till her exams. I think the others, who dont seem to socialise together anyway, will be gone so there will be no distractions. Retakes, if needed, are only a week after results, so plenty of motivation to pass first time.

I sent the twins the typed diary summary of my job efforts in my final year recently and they know it was also after the week in week out working the law centre near university over 2 years, work experience, moots, law prizes. I was also taking my younger siblings to courts in university holidays -it was quite interesting - we sat in on family court hearings, criminal cases and it's all free of charge. I also seemed to do every bit of university holiday reading and pre course reading ever. I am not sure my children do that.

It was not at all easy even then and some students seem to think you graduate and then these jobs just appear out of nowhere. Mind you I often bang my head up against a brick all on this and I bet no one read my email or is interested in all my stuff from the past. Actually it's probably a lesson in making sure you learn why you are going wrong in interviews and improve or perhaps it was always very competitive/ I think when I graduated in 82 it was a tough environment too - there were loads of graduates who never got a graduate job in their lives even because of that recession and that was of the only 15% of us who went to university. I don't expect it's too easy now either although we are moving towards the lowest unemployment since the 1950s at present albeit many in minimum wage jobs. I think i also wanted the children to know I have failed a lot and we all fail stuff but it is how we deal with it and just keep trying again and again like Robert the Bruce that probably mattesr and admitting failure. I worked and worked at university too for my piano LRAM (music diploma) , paid for piano lessons, passed the theory and aurals but failed the teaching/piano part, resat it in year 3, failed again and then probably rightly decided to give up. I think I learned as much from the failures as from any success.

Why is student finance so difficult????

DS has had his finance approved automatically for 2018/19 but we have decided that as he has been awarded a bursary, he can live off that and DH and I will pay his accommodation. However he cannot cancel the SFE application for maintenance loan. It is impossible. I thought it was just DS being inept but no (for a change). He is going to have to ring them otherwise he will have £4k drifting into his account on which he will be accruing 6% interest while he has a similar amount accruing 0.1% interest in his bursary account. Grr....