Thread 41 Corona Cohort - Autumn Adventures of our Adult Children

[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 !

previous thread

• *I am writing about catered accommodation Rutland meals. 
1)Firstly no cards were available, which the email explained. 
2)The deal was for 19 meals. website now says 17. That’s an extra £10 a week we haven’t allowed for or £390 for the year. How can a contract be changed with no notification? 

Can you please explain when meals are? Breakfast lunch and dinner for the week is 15. Brunch and supper at weekends is 4. 19. So where are meals being cut to reduce to 17?

It was quick. Roughly written. I was in Dorset with my mates. But just wanted to get an E-mail submitted quickly.

Different uni, but DDs was due last Monday and thanks to the emergency bank holiday it only arrived today so I don't know if others will still be impacted.

@Heifer DS seems to think his loan will arrive on 28th. I have no idea where he has this information from.
I wonder why they have cut the two meals. I assume it's brunch which is the meal they kept raving about at open days. And am I right in thinking it's only being served on a pay as you go basis in two halls?

@heifer DD’s loan hasn’t arrived. Being cynical I’m thinking they cut the two meals when the cost of living started going up and they realised it was going to cost them too much. But we decided on catered on a careful calculation based on 19 meals - it doesn’t look quite such good value for 17.

Can you tell me the email address you used and I will. I spoke with DS today, they’ve added £10 To his meal card because of whatever happened this weekend.

Not much communication here. We’ve had angry texts today (from us) as we suspect he’s been to see toxic ex girlfriend. He denies ut but I know him too well

On the Student Finance thing, I had a text from them at 4.30ish to say it will be in the account by 5pm on 28th. All the online stuff said 26th on Friday when I checked.

Accommodation Enquiry Form.
Accommodation, contact us, then at bottom is enquiry form.

We used that form to try and get a different room for DS on results day. We have never heard back from them…

No student loan here either, online said “within 3 working days of 26th September “ so not worrying just yet.
Told DS to let us know if he needs more money before it comes (we paid the accommodation and he is meant to be living off the loan)

No student loan for Ds yet either. It says 16th sept online.

Ds has text to tell me he his the worst cook in his flat and he blames me for not teaching him more. The others are mocking him.

Ds had one history lecture and one philosophy lecture and has already decided he wants to drop philosophy. I'm sure it will be easy enough to drop. I'm not sure how it works, if he's doing history and philosophy, does he do part content from each degree? As there are others are doing either history or philosophy (or both) so if he drops philosophy he would presumably have more history content. He's going to find out how to drop it anyway.

DD has received her student loan today, apparently. No FaceTime today, but a running commentary of her day via text. She won't be able to keep this up when proper lectures start!

@Shimy, is DS on central campus? DD is very close to the SU which might be why she's finding it so noisy.

So…….

ds thinks he might be on the wrong course. He applied for foundation year and says the standard is quite a bit lower than expected.

To be fair back in Jan/Feb when he applied he was struggling with a lot of things. Everything seemed to click into place around March/April and he progressed at a rate of knots!

Two of the tutors were questioning him after the workshop about a lot of things. He’s going to see how tomorrow goes.

@Comefromaway a friend's DS was supposed to be doing a Foundation year at Swansea, but they suggested in the first week that he should join the normal entry, so he did. He has been fine without the foundation year.

Re Notts food: in the brochure linked previously (www.nottingham.ac.uk/accommodation/documents/a-z-of-hall-living-202122.pdf) what I don't get it where it says brunch available on weekends "in selected halls". Can you then only eat the brunch if you are resident in those halls, or is brunch only served in some halls for ease of logistics, make the students walk to fewer places rather than the food be transported to more?

Agree the only sum that seems to make sense is 3 meals a day Mon-Fri + either 2 meals a day at weekends = 19, or 1 meal a day = 17. But then why would lunch be counted as a meal in the week when technically they do not "get" it, they can just buy it with the allowance in their card? In that case lunch should count on all seven days surely? This is starting to make my brain hurt.

@Heifer @crazycrofter @Oblomov22 @JustHereWithMyPopcorn

@Comefromaway can he just join the normal course if they thinks he’s capable now?

Do you think they've realised too? I imagine so. Hopefully they'll let him do an internal transfer if he wants ?

I guess that’s a conversation he needs to have with them as to whether that is possible.

@HarrietDVane He is. He's AV.

DD had her first law lectures today. Her opinion: law is already hard and kinda boring. Still a better start than business, where the lecturer didn’t show up.

She’s also met the President of the Law Society and been to athletics society.

Had a tired-but-happy phone call from DD, she had a late night yesterday. Not partying but just hanging out with friends! She is being worked really hard, and is enjoying the challenge. (Those art students you see randomly sketching around university towns or in museums? Likely to be illustrators on a "traditional" course where drawing-from-life is a big thing. It isn't everywhere!)

Now I'm just worried about her getting a repeat prescription of some meds, and am nagging her to sort that out in good time, fingers crossed! But very reassured that she's settled in.

Good luck to those swapping courses, or trying to! Sooner is better than later. And the Nottingham meal plan sounds infuriating.

@mummyinbeds Canoe polo is great fun. I did it for a short while before univ.

DD is in R, although it was definitely not her first choice! She wanted quiet accommodation

@HarrietDVane R is supposed to be the least quiet out of all the halls. I heard that if you so much as put R in your list of choices, whether it be first or last choice, you will be allocated there, so DS didn't include it at all. The good thing is, all the noise starts to pipe down after freshers week as people start to become more studious, and work kicks in. on the plus side, R is supposed to be the friendliest hall.