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 !

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@Shimy It's certainly lively at the moment. Hopefully it will calm down after Freshers' Week. I could hear it down the phone!

Dd thinks she has Freshers Flu. Her cheeks did look a bit ruddy earlier, but she says no temp. I sent her with cold & flu tabs so has taken one and vit C earlier. Hopefully just a cold although she is very tired.

Spent evening sorting out/ cleaningthe bathroom she mainly uses, I think the windows are rusted due to condensation from her mega showers. DH not best pleased.

Also couldn't resit tidying the Wizarding World Shelf.

The book at the bottom of the stacked pile is annoying me now though as wrong way round..doh!

Loving the dodgy curtains

Hope the notts meals thing gets sorted quickly

DD had college matriculation today so all dressed up in dress, heels and black gown. Got sent a pic looked fab. Text saying night at 1.48am so impressed she was up.

Went to short course intro today but then a group of course mates decided to go to the library for a chat as had sat on same table and wanted a longer chat.

Themed night out at common room followed by clubbing tonight. So managed to make stir fry beforehand.

One if the boys cut hand as holding the knife upside down to make his dinner - DD got her first aid kit and plastered him up!?

For the Nottingham set just seen a post on WIWIKAU from a mum called Emma Taylor mentioning a volunteering group students can join at the freshers fair today !!! looks super friendly if any kids need a society to get them started with mixing and settling in?

DS sounds a bit miffed this morning as his course have been told they have to choose a module now for semester 2. they haven't had any teaching yet but have to already decide between an IR module , or a political theory module.

That’s a pain @Piggywaspushed
DS has had a positive first day I think. Had 2 things in the department and spoke a fair bit to a couple of his flatmates so I think not hiding in his room as I thought he might which is great.

DD is definitely suffering with some sort of bug too @CinnamonOrangeCremeBrulee . No coldy symptoms but bad headache, slight temp and just generally rough. Luckily I sent loads of painkillers etc so is managing at the moment, but living on cereal.

Sorry to hear that Fresher Flu is now hitting. DS said that some of what he hears of student life makes him very happy to be on a gap year, he is wondering whether he was right to think that £1,500 for an en suite was not worth it!

Just a quick warning not uni related - I got woken by a text this morning at 4.30am (yeah thanks, I had actually been sleeping for once 😡) pretending to be from the government . It was a scam text trying to get me to apply for the £400 energy 'rebate' by clicking on a link. I don't believe any of us would fall for it but if you have more vulnerable people in your life please can you warn them that this is doing the rounds.

After DD’s ‘early night’ (2.30!) on Sunday night, I had my text update at 3.30 again this morning. She’s got a lot of stamina and is used to partying/not sleeping but I’m sure she’ll crash at some point in the next couple of weeks! But she sounded happy so that’s good.

@HarrietDVane I'm sure it will calm down, it's a very large hall (the biggest!) so it's bound to be very lively but according to videos I've seen none who go there regret it.

So apparently it's colder up North. Who knew hey?

Haha @omnishambles it got down to 5 degrees last night here in Northumberland! It feels cool. It’s a balmy 11 now!

DS is used to the cold & is still wearing shorts but did say the wind was nippy.

We had a lovely call with DS last night who had a full on day yesterday & was exhausted - too tired to cook himself tea so got a takeaway.

He’s joined MMA Club (no idea where that came from but he’s loving it) which does 3 sessions a week.

it turns out that while he fully embraced Freshers last week, didn’t go out at the weekend at all & caught up on sleep for yesterday.

Apparently he’s on top of his washing but cleaning ‘not so much’ 😂

@NCTDN I checked with DD and some of her lectures are online. I think mainly what they call 'professional' studies (business, law, psychology). The Science and animal studies seem to be face to face.

Miraculously DD actually made it out of the house for her first driving lesson - yay!

But she doesn't think she wants a second - sigh.

Saves us quite a lot of money though.

I had no end of texts at work this morn. Im not meant to look at my phone. But after about 10 messages I had to look. It was ds2. Everyone says I need to put socks and pants in a pillow case to wash. Next message...I only have dark pillow cases but socks are white. Next message...can I put my beige shorts in with the dark clothes. Then, can I put grey tracksuit in with dark stuff. I told him all this before he went. Ds1 just chucked everything in together, all his white clothes came home grey. After all that ds2 found the app to work the machines wasn't working today.

Ds has contacted whoever he needs to to drop philosophy. He thought he probably would drop it. He's been told they'll let him know by mid October. So he has to keep attending philosophy lectures until then. I have asked him to FaceTime us at the weekend. It will be great if he does. He said he's enjoying it there. He's still not going out with them in the evening though. Hopefully they'll start to stay in now lectures have started.

You’re having more contact with ds2 than I expected @icanbewhatiwant ! I haven’t had any text questions at all yet, but it’s only been 3 days! We did have a FaceTime with her yesterday though.

@crazycrofter Ds has been gone almost 2 weeks already. It will be nice if I can get him to FaceTime. He messages when he wants something but isn't good at answering things I ask.

@omnishambles 😂Did you resist I told you so?

@EwwSprouts there may have been a sarcastic face emoticon and a shake of the head.

DD has been really, really, good at "adulting" laundry, food, paperwork etc and is on top of her courses. So WHY is she continually putting off trying to get her repeat prescription for some meds that she really needs? I think she has a lot more faith in the GP system than I do, and is leaving it until the last minute. (She was good about ordering them when living at home, but is close to running out.) It is very hard not to nag her, but I'm worried about what happens if there's a hitch. Argh!

I should remember that two hyphens triggers strikethrough font! I often use that as a way to break up sentences. Oops.

Following up my own post, I have found that if there is a hitch, a pharmacist can give an "emergency prescription" based on a named empty pack of medication. I didn't know that! I feel relieved that there is a safety net; this might also be a relief to any other people who find their DC in similar situations..!

@PhotoDad you are braver than we are - we have left DD's GP as her home one precisely because we know there are different prescribing guidelines across the country and couldn't work out if she would be able to get her prescriptions at Uni... and the fact that she won't go anywhere near a medic without one of us unless she is unconscious due to past poor experiences! Video calls if needed is our plan!