Thread 44 GCSE Covid Cohort - Countdown to Christmas & New Year

[OrangeCinnamonLatte]

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 advice to be had

@crazycrofter oh no, your poor DD! How long will it normally take to recover from glandular fever? I hope she's feeling better soon.

I think fatigue can potentially last for ages can't it? Dd is really going to struggle if she can't keep up socially for months. She's got her head round a few weeks and has reconciled with maybe selling her ticket for the first club night of the year on 1st Feb, but she suffers from FOMO big time! I said maybe she could join people for pre's initially and then miss out the club bit. At least she has a light lecture load!

Annoyingly the extra exam period is the last week of August and the first week of September. Leeds festival is the weekend in the middle and she had tickets from us for Christmas. She'd hate to have to miss the Friday for an exam.

Ah no, crazycrofter, glandular fever is rough with or without tonsillitis. Poor DD.

Went to dd2's EPQ presentation evening last night and learned so much! Perhaps the future is in good hands after all.

@crazycrofter Wishing DD a speedy recovery. It may be the tonsillitis is making the glandular fever much worse. I got it at 18 and after the initial bout didn't suffer with longterm fatigue so fingers crossed. I got mumps and chicken pox in the same year so that wasn't great.

@ZittiEBuoni What was the subject of the EPQ?

We gave DD a ‘do as many classes as you like’ gym membership and she is very busy trying to end up financially ahead! She has taken 2 classes a day so far… Yogalates and body combat, anyone?

It does help that she can see the gym entrance from her bedroom window!

Sorry to hear about debts and glandular fever.
This is an interesting read - maybe I should have seen this before dd applied!!

www.studentcrowd.com/page/cheapest-uk-cities-for-student-accommodation

@NCTDN it seems to be quite a superficial article, may be talking about hall accommodation. Bangor costs are overstated (was looking today with a friend I am supporting to apply) and St Andrews says £164/w with shared bathroom, but that is for fully catered. Cardiff is in at 41 but lots of studies list it as one of the lowest cost places.

I think it means the average when food and bills are also taken into account?

Sorry to hear of glandular fever. Sneaks off to Heifer's house for a big hug. I too am big on cuddles, snuggles and mahoosive hugs.

@crazycrofter no wonder your DD has felt so poorly! So pleased she is at home at least, hope she gets better soonest and tell her not to worry about missing out socially she will have plenty of time to catch up when she is feeling stronger. It's good that her accommodation is all sorted too.
Will she have to take her exams during the resit dates?

@Oblomov22 more than welcome if you come with a hug - my "new" (15 years) friends here aren't much for hugs so really missing out. I need to go back home to Swindon where my Southern friends are to get a top up.

I don't think it is, looks more like the cost of first year halls which may or may not include catering. I was shocked that in Bangor you can rent a 2 bed house for £500/month, but the halls are still £122/week, so similar to more expensive towns/cities. In places like Bristol and St Andrews, halls are cheaper than private accommodation, it is the reverse in Newcastle and Bangor.

Have you heard that PM on R4 is coming from Bristol today and they will be talking about student accommodation?

@Monkey2001 that could be interesting!
If that article is just for accommodation, then dd has got a good deal for next year as it's below the average price and in a great position

@crazycrofter Sorry to hear about DD being so unwell. Hopefully now they know what it is, she can get antibiotics and soon be feeling better. Just make sure she takes it easy to give it a chance to go away properly.

DS went back to uni yesterday and is sitting an exam as I type. He seems more stressed than I thought about these exams so fingers crossed they all go ok.

I don't think students think about when exams are when they choose universities, but it could be one of the factors. At St Andrews the exams are in December, so they get a proper break at Christmas without guilt, results were out on Tuesday. A friend who is a lecturer at Bristol said they asked the students whether they would prefer December or January and they chose January, thinking they wanted longer and not thinking through the impact on their Christmas holidays!

I just looked at that housing cost website, Nottingham £181/week? I didn't see anything at that level when we were looking. DS is paying £110 per week without bills or £137 with bills.

@JustHereWithMyPopcorn they say for Nottingham:
Shared bathroom £162, Ensuite £171, Studio £192 Average £181

As the average of 162, 171 and 192 is £175 and there are way fewer studios than ensuites, there is something odd about the numbers and the difference does not seem to be enough for food. I would guess that in reality it would be around:

35% shared, 60% ensuite, 5% studio, giving average accom cost of £169 (assuming their costs by accom type are right). The extra £12 to get to their average of £181 makes no sense!

And they say St Andrews is £189/week, so £8 more than Nottingham?! Certainly not true for private, there are a lot of people paying over £800/month + bills. They say:
Shared bathroom £164, Ensuite £200, Studio £244 Average £189

I know that halls are mostly £7,623 or £6,709 fully catered shared bathroom, of which £4,975/4061 is for accom and £2,648 is catering. Ensuite is £7,205 uncatered, studios only for postgrads are £12,199 for 50 weeks. Undergrad is 38 weeks.

So uncatered figures should be shared - £118, en suite - £189, studio - £244. So the only one which was right was studios!

I also think it makes SO much more sense to look at the annual cost - paying for 38 weeks or 52 weeks makes a big difference.

In conclusion, that article is rubbish and will mislead anyone who relies on it!

Agreed @Monkey2001 I also looked at the university near me, very close to London and, while it's not the loveliest town in the world, it's a lot more expensive than Notts and yet came in as one of the cheapest.

@crazycrofter Wishing your Dd a speedy recovery, though I guess she needs to be prepared for it to take a while…

Ds has now been off for over 5 weeks, had one exam this week so just went back to do that & came home again. New semester does not start till 6th Feb. So he will have been off for nearly 8 weeks! Just had to pay the second instalment of his halls fees. Not cheap when you work out how many weeks he is actually there.

One thing to bear in mind with the costs is that you inevitably are not paying x amount per month because it gets condensed into a smaller number of payments. At least when they are renting a house it’s a smaller monthly amount.

Sorry to hear about glandular fever. I do t think they give antibiotics for that. In fact, I think from memory that they can make it worse. DD1 had raging tonsillitis at uni and we were concerned about GF and did a bit of research.

@NCTDN Brighton is #70 on that list. Only London higher. Ds has found a house lower than that average though. I think his is £129 week, plus bills.

Ds spent the afternoon going round charity shops today. He was looking for vintage style clothes and a coat. He said nothing fits. So he went home with nothing. I don't know where to suggest for clothes. He is so small. Next age 12/13 is ideal but he doesn't want kids clothes.

His housemates will be back this weekend as lectures start next week, so at least he will have company again.

Dd was actually prescribed the 'wrong' type of antibiotics for the tonsillitis - they apparently cause a reaction if the person also has GF - because the ENT doctor on Monday was convinced she didn't have GF. He didn't even mention that they'd done a blood test for GF and the results wouldn't be back til the next day. We only found out because we went to A&E the next day. The doctor there prescribed different antibiotics for the tonsillitis - but I'm not sure how they know it's bacterial tonsillitis and not viral? Maybe just a guess? They're not working anyway, she feels no better..

Ds's life is getting even more crazy. I won't bore you with the details other than to say that I should have trusted him when he refused to apply to for a p/t job at the start of the year (a friend's dd was going to put a word in for him at The Arena)

He is blisfully happy I just hope he does not take on too much.

GF is viral so no antibiotics will work!

@Benjispruce4 the ABs are for the tonsillitis which they thought was bacterial. But if it is, they’re not working.