University 2019/20 intake: vacations, vaccinations, va-va-voom restored and virtually into their third year

[NewModelArmyMayhem18]

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It gets worse. He's now messaged to say his laptop has broken. It was fixed about a month ago. It keeps not turning on. It was a new £800 laptop when he started university. Apparently his dissertation proposal is in there, he now has no access to it. I'm working until early afternoon tomorrow. Then was due to visit my mum on the south coast weds morn. for a few days. So I've not really got time to collect it. He's apparently too ill to bring it to our local pc shop 😡

PCR or LFT? DS’ university are requiring LFT testing whenever they need to come into campus so a test ahead of coming home should be sensible. I have my fingers crossed for these last few days, and am slightly hesitant about next semester - hoping he can get one year of relative normality with face to face tutorials

@icanbewhatiwant

It gets worse. He's now messaged to say his laptop has broken. It was fixed about a month ago. It keeps not turning on. It was a new £800 laptop when he started university. Apparently his dissertation proposal is in there, he now has no access to it. I'm working until early afternoon tomorrow. Then was due to visit my mum on the south coast weds morn. for a few days. So I've not really got time to collect it. He's apparently too ill to bring it to our local pc shop 😡

Tell me he saves his documents on onedrive (free for all students) or dropbox or something??

@Benjispruce5 that bears out what's always said about Durham topping the leaderboard for well-off students. £1K for a student (even if it is skiing) holiday is OTT. Whatever happened to the days of students living frugal lifestyles? I can remember fellow students living on muesli for breakfast, lunch and dinner for months because they couldn't afford anything more!

There are some really nasty (non-Covid) viruses doing the rounds at the moment too. The only positive with our young people being mid-virus (or just recovering) is that hopefully, they will be well for Christmas.

I do hope that as @MrKlaw has commented, your DS does have his dissertation proposal saved somewhere else @icanbeanthingiwant? Not even on a memory stick?

@icanbewhatiwant it's going from bad to worse, isn't it? Your poor DS. If he is feeling this bad he really does need a doctor. My own laptop did this very thing a year ago. The specialist shop had to put in a new hard drive. They somehow recovered what was on the old one, though. For his work my DS had been storing everything on his own cloud storage but it is full, so lost it.

My DS has a meeting with uni tomorrow. Watch this space.

Good luck to your DS @simbobs.

@icanbewhatiwant I hope your DS manages to retrieve his work, sort out his computer, and feels considerably better very soon.

@MrKlaw @ @NewModelArmyMayhem18 no it isn't saved anywhere else. He'd be the first to tell me off if I didn't save something. DH drove to Norwich to collect the laptop, it is now in our local shop.

Yes I suggested calling the gp again. But he's not replied. DH said ds was fine. But DH wasn't there long. He didn't go in his house though.

Yes @Benjispruce5 and @NewModelArmyMayhem18 - DS definitely knows his fellow students are much more wealthy than us. Paying 1K for a skiing trip is nothing for most of them.

I had a nasty cold/cough thing a few weeks ago - very surprising as I’m in the same line of business as benjispruce and I never usually get ill! It was definitely not covid as I did loads of lfts and had a negative PCR.

Good luck to your DS @simbobs

Memory sticks are the reliable old school way of saving work! But too late now - sympathies @icanbewhatiwant
I got my two MacBook airs for their 18th birthdays/going to uni, after many problems with their laptops through school. Apart from last year when a port on DDs kept overheating/wouldn’t charge (and was quickly fixed by Apple), they have been much more reliable than the laptops.

I thought I'd better add that Ds finally booked in to see a gp. After I threatened to drive all the way there to take him as he didn't seem to able to sort it. He's been given antibiotics. Not heard about the laptop yet though.

@bigTillyMint yes ds2 has his iPad for school work, he's an Apple fan. It's never gone wrong. The rest of us have iPhones, apart from ds1 he refuses to have anything Apple, I certainly won't be buying anything HP again.

I thought I'd added that Ds finally went to the gp, after lots of nagging and he now has antibiotics. My post has vanished though.

@icanbewhatiwant it's good to hear that your DS has got some antibiotics. That will surely put him on the path to recovery, and the upside of being unwell is that he is less likely to have picked up an infection before coming home. I dread to think what the chances are of mine not getting Omicron before long as he works in a large store and has a wide group of friends . I am tempted to make him do a test before letting him into the house!

He had a (telephone) meeting with student support at last. They are still mulling things over but it is likely that he will restart final year in September - which is when he was supposed to be doing so but for his inability to find a work placement. I was in a rather noisy place when he called me, but that was the gist of it. This could all be for the best, but that depends on his ability to earn enough to live on. He is already talking about getting a 2nd job. I am not sure whether he will go back to uni in September, but unless he is already working in something in which there is some future by then I hope he does.

Hi everyone. Well things are looking gloomy again. I’m hoping a short circuit break will mean our students can return some time in January. DD’s friends that went skiing have all come back with Covid so I’m glad she didn’t go.

It seems to be rife at the moment. My DNiece is the only one of her cohort not to have covid as she left a gathering before her friends all went on to a party. Unsurprisingly she has left uni a few days early. Now that they are describing the omicron symptoms as pretty much identical to a common cold I am concerned that DS may have had something else when I spoke to him last week, as he definitely had a blocked nose, and from niece's experience her friends all continued to test negative for up to 5 days after the party, so how to to know who has what??? The rest of us are all triple vaxxed, so we are just going to have to hope for the best.

@simbobs that sounds promising for your DS. At least it gives him options.

@icanbewhatiwant hope your DS is well on the way to recovery now.

I have a DN who went skiing and is stuck now, having tested COVID+.

We are emerging the other side of all being ill and hoping that we may actually get a (rare) Christmas when everyone is feeling tip-top (or at least well on the road to recovery). Usually, someone is ill (will never forgot the year DS and DD both threw up in the early hours of Christmas morning). At the best of times, this is a time of the year when people are feeling run down, isn't it?

While I'm not entirely convinced it's not now too late to be having a circuit breaker, pretty sure there will be more restrictions this side of Christmas, unfortunately.

@NewModelArmyMayhem18 yes thanks. He's getting better. DH collected his laptop Friday and I went into it and emailed his work to him so he can carry on. He is hopefully coming home Tuesday.

Ds2 is now a close contact to someone who has covid. He sat next to him from 9am to 1pm in business studies. The lad thought he'd just got a cold and had done a LFT then felt worse so pcr'd the next day. So Ds will do a LFT every day. Not much more we can do. He spends 90% of the day in his bedroom anyway. I'm amazed we've stayed clear of covid so far. I am worried about DH getting it as he's quite a bit older than me (mid 60's) and gets chest infections easily. But he's had his booster, the dc's have all the vaccines they are eligible for. Apart from ds1 as he's due his booster, but not well enough really. He will get it when he's better. That is all we can do. We don't see many people over Christmas. Just DH's dd, her dh and Ds for Boxing Day. They are anti vaccine, but have had covid recently.

Ds1 has already been told what will happen about the practical side of his dissertation if covid rules change and he can't do it. It will be sad if he has to base it all on other peoples work. He's really enjoyed the practicals this third year as the first 3 months of his course he didn't do many as they were just getting started. Then there were strikes, then covid. So really this last simester has been the first proper labs.

I hope everyone has a good, covid free Christmas.

Not surprising that the skiers are returning positive! @NewModelArmyMayhem18 is your DN stuck in France?

We are all still negative and boostered (apart from DS who needs to sort his), but obvs could hit at any moment. Hopefully only like a cold, but it’s the SI that puts paid to everything.

Just to say that apart from DD (who missed out on getting vaccinated at school due to them running out of vaccine doses!), we are fully vaccinated and boostered and still got it!

Yes, in France, @bigTillyMint.

@NewModelArmyMayhem18 how long after booster did you get it?
DD hasn’t got hers yet, hopefully this week and DD2 only had her second in November so not eligible yet.

Oh gosh @NewModelArmyMayhem18 - did she go with uni? Are they (I’m guessing there are others) stuck in their skiing accommodation?

I’m hoping DS will go to a walk-in tomorrow!

I have just had a phone call from DS whose housemate has tested positive today. He has no symptoms but had gone home for Christmas and done a courtesy test. Guess who was with the friend all of yesterday? He has no idea where or when he became infected. DS is just off to get a pack of LFTs as there are none left in their house, but I despair. If he tests positive he will lose his job and have to spend Christmas alone. WWYD?

To be fair, @Benjispruce5 I think I was already brewing it silently (no symptoms at that stage) when I had my booster. But I'm sure I caught it directly from DD who shares the hugs and germs around.

All her close friends have either had it within the past three weeks or are now self-isolating with it (and they're not all from the same school or even town).

Oh no @simbobs
But he may be negative - lots are. For example DDs friends dad tested positive 2 weeks ago, but she stayed negative. Then her brother tested positive but she is still negative. It all seem so random.

oh no @simbobs. Really hope your DS stays negative.

@bigTillyMint I'm crossing everything. It is going to be so miserable if he tests positive. I almost wish he didn't test and lived in ignorance, but that's just me being selfish.