University 2020 :10: Empty nests warm vests and covid tests: uni parents 2020

[sammyjoanne]

Carry on from MilicentMartha's University 9 thead
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/higher_education/a4025020-University-2020-9-And-theyre-off-making-hay-while-the-sun-shines?msgid=101075411#101075411

@SusannahSophia I wonder if that will be the same for physics? DD has her first 2 exams next Wednesday and 2 the following Wednesday. With it being maths based, I wonder if it will be same set up.

Just messaged DS, two of his exams are more like multi choice, so workings can be done on paper, but answered online.

Also, keep forgetting to name change for this thread!

Dd2 looking at flats but looking expensive for Edinburgh.

@TheDrsDocMartens

Dd2 looking at flats but looking expensive for Edinburgh.

Yes they are. Dh has a friend who is giving dd and friends first option on a flat but she can't even get there to view it. Think it is c£500 pm

There’s going to be a lot of pot luck on flats I suspect

DD and friends paying £595 pcm each for flat in Marchmont (Edinburgh) this year. It has 5 beds, 2 bathrooms and a huge sitting/dining room. Includes WiFi but no other bills. Seems higher end of going rate but the separate social space is apparently unusual. DD and friends very grateful to have been in Marchmont this year as it’s full of second years. DH and I very impressed as it’s a fab flat in a lovely area (compared to the grot we endured in our different university cities). The landlord was very reasonable about contracts and lockdown rates when things looked uncertain too.

DS got 73% in his exam , he only has 1 this term, essays and course work are in the 65-75% range. I’m very glad he’s doing ok.

From insta photos today, looks like lots of fun in the snow with flat mates and others on campus. I’m just glad to see some normal student fun... at one point I was calling him twice a day as I was so worried about him.

DS has two exams tomorrow then one more on Friday. No snow today in Manchester, a bit earlier in the week, but mostly rain. Oh well, it is Manchester after all! ☔️

Dd pays just short of £170/ week for a room in a shared flat in London - it’s shared between six so the total rent is £1000/week! It’s not ‘posh’ but it is clean, not cramped, and well maintained. It was newly painted during lockdown last year ready for them moving in. This is ‘plus bills’ - they all put £45/month into an account to cover fuel, water, internet and cleaning stuff/loo roll and are hoping to have leftover hill lonely for a night out at the end of the year. This is near Charing Cross hospital.

Dd had a covid vaccine on Saturday (she’s volunteering at a vaccine clinic) and hasn’t had a good weekend with a crashing headache and no sleep on Saturday night, with a slightly less bad headache all through yesterday and just said she ached all over and had no energy. Day spent mostly in bed apart from meals and a tutorial in the afternoon (yes on a Sunday...) Has woken up today feeling better though. On Sunday morning she was waiting for tesco open - a flat of med students and no one had paracetamol/ibuprofen, she’d left the med box I sent her with at home in her room 🙄

Leftover hill lonely - leftover money! Love autocorrect

Love autocorrect

I bought a set of 'autocorrected' Christmas cards- hummed and haa'ed over the last remaining one of the set and in the end popped it through the door of a local friend with a fairly racy sense of humour, but with the strict injunction that it was for her eyes only and with a family-type card for general consumption. She subsequently messaged me to say that both the family-friendly card and 7 Thongs a-brimming were being proudly displayed on her mantlepiece.

Marialuisa will your DD be staying in the flat next academic year? DS looking for a 5 bed in marchmont for next session so if she is thinking of moving please let me know! 😀

DS has a reading week. I think they are virtually house hunting. No exam results yet but DS has always said every exam ever has either ‘gone well’ or been ‘fine’ with a lot of variation in results so I’m not holding my breath.

Dd has now returned to halls. Although not much is open at the moment she felt it would be better socially there with her household bubble and have fewer distractions than at home.

DS is wavering about going back, but is managing to work productively here, not to mention being fed!

He has 6 summative assignments due on and around March 1st, so I think he may get most of them in and then head up for the last 2 weeks of term - particularly if any sort of sport is opened up.

My son sent a picture in his very warm new dressing gown I bought him for Christmas and a hat on in his living room with the heating on which even so is still freezing apparently so he is probably missing the heat of our very warm house but seems happy to be back at university.

Ds2 very preoccupied with house hunting. He nearly put down a deposit for a house he hadn't seen the inside of which was going to be completely renovated, but despite excellent location and long long garden it was too much of a gamble to involve 4 others in .not knowing what house was going to consist of bar ground plan. Living dining room ws tiny 3m X 3m..I think until he has been in that sort of living area for real he won't realise how far it is from his dream "social" pad..nowhere to eat and sit down watch TV at same time.
But may be all the houses will have same floor space for communal life in a five bedder..he really would have done better with six or eight people
Anyway he is enjoying searching because you can legally look round and that at least is a change of scene

He sounds v grownup weighing location v space. His fellow flatmates are terrified they are going to end up with no house...one said...just take the derelict one (this was another house of Dickensian squalor near station) but he insisted on continuing the quest...

@Nettleskeins he does sound very mature! My ds hasn't seen his flat but the girls have and tbh I think they'll be a better judge than ds who wouldn't have a clue what to look for! They very sensibly chose one with two bathrooms so I suspect there will be a boys one and a girls one! If the state of ds shared bathroom is anything to go by that's the best decision!

DD didnt see her flat either, but the two that went took lots of photos. And looking where shes based, it looks nice :)
Shes busy with exams at the moment. Shes had 2 so far. one went fine, the other not so good (she thinks shes got about 60% on the not so fine one)
Shes got 4 modules this term so its been a busy one, but shes doing ok and still making time for her housemates and have a saturday night get together, and mid week movie night.

If you don't mind me asking, how are your DC sitting exams at the moment? Are they open book/ invigilated?

I am not the best person to ask on exams as my sons in December sat online open book law exams (post grad) which I think are open book every year. For them the differences were having a word limit and typing it (usually you can just ask for more physical paper and you are handwriting exams) so those were changes from the norm and no travelling to an exam centre. They both did them from separate rooms upstairs in my house. I felt like I was running an exam centre and I was doing things like stopping people running the front door bell during exam time. Unilke some barrister exams last summer their exams did not have someone watching them on a web cam (in those bar exams apparently one chap had to urinate in a pint glass - he took a picture - as you were rightly not allowed to leave the room even for that).

With the twins I was happy it was fairly done - they are sent "advance materials" (I just posted some to my son yesterday he wanted printing off for his up coming mock exam for this term) which are a few pages you might get before you see a client of a law firm - an mock email saying this is the issue and this is what we have been sent so far by the client. You get a week or so to think about that as you might in practice and then on the exam day have something like a 3 hour slot to log in and answer questions you are given on the day but being allowed to refer to things like Acts of Parliament, your notes etc. If you had not learned the term's course work and attending the workshops I think it would be very hard to pass even tough it is open book so I am actually pretty happy it is fair in their case anyway.

Last summer they had online university (undergraduate) exams for finals. Again I thought those were okay as in fact instead of what I expected having read law where I had day after day solid of exams over a couple of weeks they both just had one or two summer exams with lots earlier in the year plus their dissertation so I think they had some kind of on line timed essay with of course marks from year 2 (real in person exams) and earlier in year 3 counting anyway so again I did not feel the summer 2020 exams/system warped things. One had a lot of trouble getting materials for his dissertation but his tutor was quite helpful and he got good at finding very hard to get stuff on all kinds of random websites.

My daughter’s end of first year exams (medicine) last year were open book, online exams on the university platform - this was just after Easter so was early in the lockdown, so for the first one they had technical issues as they had two year groups (over 700 students!) trying to get on simultaneously. The rest of the exams ran more smoothly. My son (compsci) sat his finals at home last summer too. These had to be printed, filled in by hand, then uploaded within a certain timeframe.

Three open book exams for my DD in December online on uni platform but no monitoring of room etc. Two essay subjects were each 2 essays in 24 hours. One subject was a 90 minute paper at a fixed time. DD said that she'd been invited to "join" others so they could help each other out. She didn't (been one for the rules since nursery) but she knows people who did. Rather telling marks for this subject not yet released despite exam being 6+ weeks ago. DD will go mad if the duffers in her tutorial have all scored top marks.

Thanks for the responses - seems like the Uni's made the most of a bad situation