Thread 40 - Corona Cohort , Falling into Autumn 🍂

[CinnamonOrangeCremeBrulee]

This is a support thread for our young adults post GCSEs 2020, regardless of their educational setting, and their results ( or life updates for those who went into work or have had results earlier). It is respectfully requested that all are supportive and helpful to each other. If you want to start a debate, e.g state vs private, uni vs employment please don't within this thread.

Some of us have been here since first thread back in yr10, some will be new. Everyone has been friendly and helpful in the past. Everyone is welcome. It is hoped this will continue. We were previously on the secondary board and then further education, now we shall be here in 'Parents of Adult Children' gulp

Our DS/DD may continue down various pathways ( employment, apprenticeships, higher ed). Be warned there might be lots of 'Uni Freshers' chat this time of year. My experience is that everyone is welcomed wherever, whatever their child is doing we have some in work, gap years , apprenticeships etc too. Lots of contributors with different experiences and always sympathy and support to be had !

@Isthisjustnormal we aren't using any vacuum bags, just big plastic shopper-type ones (on which each zip seems to break immediately, but otherwise are OK). I guess it just has to make the journey from car to room so anything is OK!

Big room @singingstones, will that mean your DS is the one to host any TV viewing gatherings?

We are setting off to Notts shortly, DS is calm and thinks he has everything he needs whereas I... am the opposite of that.

@Seeline the room looks the same as ds1's when he was UEA. But instead of white his was brown. Same wardrobe though. Ds2's wardrobe at Sussex is double the size which is better. Did you have a bedside table at UEA? Ds1 didn't have anything next to the bed. So I had to go and buy something for Ds to keep a bedside lamp and clock on.

No tv @blinkbonny but I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes the venue for pre drinks!

No bedside table but luckily we'd taken one of these (and remembered the mini tool kit to assemble it!) Just enough room next to the bed.
Single wardrobe a bit of a pain, but as DD has few clothes that need hanging, we'd got one of those hanging storage things from IKEA and used that instead as there are no shelves.

Quick word on the vacuum bags, DSs clothes were wrinkled to hell when i took them out!

@ealingwestmum oh when do oxford peeps go?

Following weekend I think, that’s Horace, Craggyrat, Proggy, and we have a newbie with an Oxford DC join recently if I remember rightly? Apologies if I’ve missed any!

Who has life360 or find friends activated? I'm regretting looking as dd obviously didn't spend last night in her own room. I'm thinking all sorts now

Thanks all for the vacuum bag suggestions. Yeah Oxbridge will be still to go and I think Loughborough - do we have anyone going there?

This is DS's bedside table from college. Currently stuffed full of things behind the door in hall, job for him today is sort through and I have just raised cupboard for dry foods and found food flask he might as well take and will no doubt never use !

Good luck to all those dropping off this weekend and hope they all settle in well. DS goes tomorrow and I'll be looking out for the turquoise curtains and will report back.

@Isthisjustnormal My friends son is going to Loughborough on Sunday.

Not been on for a while so not caught up yet. Hope drop offs gone well. DS goes week Saturday. I think Lancaster also next weekend. He has his room allocation now. He went for cheap which is £4.5k for 29 weeks but has to bring stuff home in holidays. He does have ensuite which he wasn't expecting. They sent photos and it looks fine. Ground floor with two windows and little garden outside. Hes been ill this week - pre-freshers flu

I do NCTDN, but with DD’s full consent as we all are on it as a family, and purely for safety purposes.

As tempting as it may be to question her, try and resist, or make it really subtle otherwise you may compromise more than you want to. Yes, it could be what you think, or just crashing in someone’s room because it was late etc etc. But, she is now leading her next stage of life, and independence (to a degree) comes with that?

@ealingwestmum @NCTDN We use find my friends, none of them seem bothered by it. It’s useful when they are travelling & never remember to text that they have arrived ok - I can see that they have without nagging!

I did have one worrying incident when Dd seemed to be an abandoned warehouse for hours - turned out she was helping out at a modelling photo session!

I am definitely going to try an wean myself off checking Decorhate once I know she is navigating city life with ease, and the daily 3/4am night outs ease after this week’s freshers activities.

Right now holding off contacting her to say PLEASE don’t miss your orchestra audition today because you got in late type text; but can’t do it as I know she got in late (or early this morning!)

@NCTDN are those apps really accurate? I know I've looked to see where dh is when he's been travelling somewhere and it's showed him slightly off route, which he apparently didn't do....so I assume they might not be completely accurate. Obviously he was very close to the location showing though. My older 2 dc's wouldn't let me use an app for them. Especially ds2. Ds1 added me on Snapchat so I could see roughly where he was when he was in USA. But Snapchat only updates when they open the app. So not very useful.

I think Find my phone is an Apple feature that works on location GPS Ican. I don’t have any tracking apps, like Snapchat’s maps; I was able to see DD’s global location via inter railing so long as her phone was turned on.

There can be a slight lag, but it catches up when refreshed.

We enforced location tracking with ds in the summer after the incident where he was in the gym/roaming all night. It's only an issue when he's run out of data, which seems to be the case for at least a week of every month! With ds over the summer it was very useful; there were a number of occasions when I checked his location at 10pm and he was in a completely different town 40/50 miles away. He decides things on a whim/in the moment and doesn't think to update us as to his whereabouts. We're working on improving this.... But the app is pretty accurate.

Dd won't let me track her - and there's no need because she always updates us if she'll need a lift etc. She says she's booked three club nights at the union next week and one of them requires a costume to represent her course. She has no idea what to do for Psychology! And we threw away her lab coat in the move. So any (cheap) ideas are welcome!

No tracking in this household. DS and DD both have Snapchat maps, but I'm not allowed to do Snap 😆
Just reply on the WhatsApp blue ticks and 'last seen' status to check they're still alive...
I think in someway it's easier. I certainly never think about where DS is now (unless he's back home, when obviously I have to stay awake until he's home 🙄).

Rely not reply!

@crazycrofter Fancy dress psychology. Might be fun to face paint an old style phrenology face, with free will? Etc. not glamorous though, for the 27 prom dress girl.

I’ve not messaged mine for 2 days. Scared I will blurt out the bad stuff.

Zebra 💐