Heading towards 4th year or post grad/jobs

[Xenia]

Continuation of the previous thread for those of us with children who are just finishing their 3rd year at university (so either "graduating" in 2020 or going into year 4 in Autumn 2020)..........

My twins' degree results will be out in late July. Good luck to everyone else waiting for finals results.

@Xenia, that rugby story is really sad. I read it on the BBC website yesterday. I have a y12 student who is doing his EPQ on mild traumatic brain injuries, but he is focussing more on mental health issues. I sent him a link to the story for background reading. I'm not sure how he is defining mental health issues but it's sobering and very sad reading.

One advantage of having the DDs home is that they cooked this evening. DD1 did the main course and DD2 the dessert. It's nice to come home from work and hear them bickering in the kitchen. Tomorrow DD1 is taking their car in for service so will spend an afternoon shopping in the city centre. I just need to finish the list for her!

Yes and I have always had a thing about telling the children to protect their head, even if you are little children fighting your siblings never hit the head I always have said. I think my mother in the 1970s went on about boxers who ended up with brain damage so it was drummed into us.

Ah, yours sound very useful. My two cook together when home although I have to wake one at 8am to revise - their first law exam starts at 10am so it will certainly be a tense few days until Wednesday when the exams are over.

How are everyone’s dcs getting on with post graduate job searches and are they finding it more competitive this year?

@bevelino DD is only interested in funded PhD options. That leaves Cambridge and errr, nowhere else.

She has looked further afield. She would love to go to Manchester (my home city) but they want £20k and we just can't afford it. However, DH's mother was German born and she has looked into going there. She can enrol for 300 euros plus living costs. That's a huge difference! She does have DH's cousins in Germany and her bf's degree is German, so they may consider moving there. To be fair, I don't blame them. The career she was originally planning is not recruiting this year, hence the further study idea.

As a teacher, I'm quite relieved she has decided NOT to teach. Bf is quite keen; I will work on him!

Lovely news re weddings and engagements.

My DD has finished her first post-graduate job as she applied for two others, one which looked good and she thought she had a chance of and one which looked good and that she thought she had no chance of as they are in demand with a lot of applicants. She got offered job 1 and all of a sudden got offered job 2 so explained the situation to job 1 and they agreed that she would be daft not to take it so she's done that and is starting soon.

She's starting to apply for university again next year now she's got several months of work experience under her belt.

@Malbecfan, wow £20k I so much money. I wish your dd well and Germany seems a good option.

Two of my dds were planning on being language teachers but they have been put off after reading some of the unvarnished comments on the mumsnet threads.

Dd1 has managed to secure a grad scheme and we are celebrating that.

Congratulations to your DD, bevelino!

Afaik mine is hopefully talking terms and conditions re her job offer now term has ended...I need to catch up with her.

Lovely news Xenia’s DD , well done and how nice to have a wedding to plan.
Nice to hear job/further study plans coming together, DS in final year is still applying for graduate jobs, getting to assessment stages and interview twice but no offers yet,

Well done to your DDs, EnOlaGay and Bevelino!
I think the reality of the cost of a Masters course has hit home with DS2 and he's going to aim to get a job at the end of this academic year. He's said if he doesn't get anything from his preferred options he'll just take whatever he can get and reapply to the grad schemes once he has his final degree result.
He got the final mark for his year in Australia yesterday, 89%. We are so pleased for him! I'd been a bit twitchy about it because I remember either CarrieMac or Haffdonga saying their DC had had a bit of a problem when their child's mark had been sent to their UK uni.

There certainly are some jobs out there despite its being a difficult year. My younger daughter had quite a few different offers this summer she was choosing between and someone I know's daughter (in year 3 at university) just got a good offer from a firm of management consultants for when she graduates which the father was very exciting about.

The 89% for the latedecember son above sounds really good.

The twins' first exam went fine yesterday. It is a different skill going it on line eg if you over do the word count you cannot continue to type in it until you delete words; you are typing not writing; one said you couldn't make what you type full screen as then you cannot scroll up and down so have to type across half a page - basically quite a few different things but the first open book exams they have ever done which can be useful if you can look at things very quickly because you already know them. There are some multiple choice questions this time too and some are quite subtle so apparently they can take ages and are worse than the other part of the exam whereas you might have expected them to be easier. You cannot put down your explanation either whereas with maths where people like to see your working or traditional aw where you don't just put your conclusion but you set out how you got there multiple choice removes all that.

They start their second exam shortly. I feel like I am running an exam centre in a sense with them set up at desks in different rooms and trying to ensure the house is silent, door bell doesn't go, internet doesn't go down etc.

The church replied to my daughter and she should hear within a week about dates for next year etc.

@bevelino and @En0lagay congratulations to your DDs!

@Xenia, good luck with the exam centre hosting. Whilst I hope all goes well for your DC, don't get too good at it, or you could find yourself in demand...

@latedecember1963, brilliant mark! Well done to your DS.

Only 4 more teaching days for me now the final day has been cancelled. I am honestly counting the lessons down, especially when you get Microsoft Sharepoint going down this afternoon taking everything with it

Am on a countdown to DS coming home although it would be helpful if he would say when! On two terms left then until he has finished his Masters.
Have spent hours at the embassy this morning getting one of my passports renewed. Am hoping I can go over in the new year to see DD and my parents.

Glad Parker got the passport done. I had to renew mine this summer simply because the 10 years was almost up (first year I have not been abroad for years) and it came the quickest ever in my life by post - in about 3 days (new UK one) and I suppose they just weren't very busy at the passport office then.

Malbec internet going down was my worry for teh twins' exams but we do have two separate internet lines with BT mostly because of my work and also my older son had one put in which was fast on the 2nd floor in his bed room when the rest of us were on dial up - his sisters had a horse each at stables so his internet connection was very very cheap compared with that. I've kept it going as we don't eat/I can't earn if I have no internet so having 2 lines is useful in case one is down. Anyway the exam was good today. The 2 early next week will be harder. Exams at home can be unfair though if you live in a shared room or do not have good internet. it is not like making everyone go to one exam hall. The twins are not even sure what the software does or monitors. It does not seem to be like the summer's bar exams where notoriously you could not look down from your screen or leave it even for the toilet and one potential barrister posted a photo on line - he had to pour his glass of water on his carpet and urinate into the glass in order to ensure he was not banned from the exam. Moral to that tale is do not drink or eat much before any exam ever.

Xenia - renewed passport should be ready for collection in three weeks but I’ve a second one if it takes longer. DS has said his needs renewing but he has Canadian passport and they are taking at least six weeks. He’s going to get it sorted when he is home at Christmas so it done in good time for applying for his visa when he starts work.

DS2 has a 24 hour open book exam next week and our internet keeps dropping. He is stressing considerably about how he should actually revise for an exam when you can look up all the answers from the www. but then perhaps he can't if virgin media let us down again

And in passport chat, ds1 has just managed to put his passport through the washing machine ruining the passport plus several items of clothing. (So much ink comes out of a passport, who knew?). He suggested I might want to pay to replace it seeing as I paid for his last one. I explained the harsh realities of being an independent adult to him.

So interesting to hear the news of exams, weddings, jobs, further training, etc. Sad news about the demise of the passport though ☹️.

I must send my passport off for renewal, although not sure when I'll be going anywhere. 🤨

I accidentally crashed DS2's Zoom meeting today - stuck my head round his door and nearly passed out because it was so stuffy. His Zoom companions couldn't have failed to hear me exclaiming about opening a window! 🤣🤣🤣 Oops.

Haffdonga I think the rules for open book on line exams should be clearer. The ones the twins are doing are not the same rules as those barristers did int he summer for example where I think an invigilator for the barristers look at them all the time - may be those barrister ones were not open book. So what is "open book"?

Traditionally it meant you went into an exam hall with your copy of Shakespeare's play so you could refer to it in the exam or with the Companies Act 2006 so you didn't have to memorise it all. Once you move on line then you either print your materials out or have the book next to you or have them open on screen and flt between windows on the screen. That bit is not hard. What is harder is what can you paste - eg I think you can find the reference to a relevant quote from a law and cut and paste that into the answer rather than retype it. That is bound to be fine and obviously at the other end you cannot pay an expert to sit next to you and tell you or type the answers but between those two extremes I think there is some uncertainty. I certainly think the rules probably say nothing that breaches copyright can be done so that obviously mean you cannot cut and paste your lecturer's slides into your answers and you cannot have the doors open between rooms where twins are or text a friend during an exam - must be 100% solo effort. Mine know I would much rather they failed than didn't do it fairly but it is certainly a whole new world. What I am glad about is my conversations with them this term show they have learned the law on these topics really well whether they pass or fail the exam.

As you say some people might have internet cutting out. Ours seems to have stopped cutting out but a few months ago it cut out for about 1 minute once a day for example. My son's Bristol room is not even big enough for a desk so he is home doing the exam but not everyone has nice big homes with desks in them and silence so a physical exam hall is a lot fairer. I suspect the April final exams for my twins of this year will be online too as it does seem to be working pretty well and at least everyone has certainty.

Sorry about the passport in washing machine. I got mine renewed int he summer because of the end of the post Brexit interim period requiring 6 months clear on it to travel so I thought I might as well get it done but have not been away since 2019 now.

Hmm, I must do my passport as we have a provisional booking for an EU holiday in the summer, not that we think we'll go but they transferred our booking from this year.

We're assuming we won't be going abroad till at least 2022. We've got a holiday booked for exmoor in September so that's something to look forwards to.

I am such an optimist that I assumed our June 2020 holiday for 11 would go ahead and we were all ready and willing to go but the company cancelled it (and they paid me the full deposit back so that was okay). We will probably try again next year for July (grandchild at school now so June holidays were briefly okay when children at university but no longer....) Although some of my children have managed holidays a broad this year to Antigua, Corfu, Cyprus, France this year and some are away skiing in Switzerland over Christmas so as my son said yesterday had I really wanted a holiday I could have had one.

We cancelled our planned may 2020 holiday way back in January because DH reckoned at that point air travel would be disrupted which wouldn't make for a relaxing holiday. At that point, of course, we'd assumed there would be no problem going to Northumberland or Scotland instead.

@ErrolTheDragon, we managed a fabulous holiday in Scotland this year - silver lining! Should have been South Africa.

We should have completed our move to Canada now but due to Covid we’ve not even been over to buy a house.
I’ve two passports as I travel so much for work and regularly need a visa. Hopefully the second will come back from the embassy in the three week timescale but dependant upon travel restrictions I can use the other passport to go and see DD. Waiting to hear what the post Brexit Covid travel restrictions will be although as a national I should be ok to go although DH and DS probably won’t.
DS is coming home on Wednesday! Can’t wait to see him. He says he’s finished his course work for this term and nothing to do until he goes back next month. Hard to believe he only has two terms left and then his Masters is done. He’s the summer off before starting work in Singapore in September - dependant on how long it takes to get his visa. If it’s anything like DD getting hers to work in Brussels, he’ll be home until Christmas!

Exciting for Parker with the son coming home.

My twins have their fourth and last (and worst) law exam of the term tomorrow so are really looking forward to that and they start new subjects next term so it can be a bit of a break after tomorrow.