Thread 45 GCSE Covid Cohort - Bunnies bouncing into Spring

[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

previous thread

@ZandathePanda your poor DD (and of course you and your family) to go through such an ordeal these past months, but she shows such strength of character with her uni plans. I hope that things improve for her, which ever way she decides to go. 💐

I've given in to DS and am picking him up tomorrow. He has reverted to whining like a toddler until I can't take it anymore and I cracked under the pressure. I am so weak. 😐

Fingers crossed for your granddaughter. I had ‘standard’ febrile convulsions, as did my brother, but they stopped when we were 3. They were triggered by high temperatures. Fingers crossed it’s something simple like that xxx

The open wards we are in we are surrounded mainly by children and babies with brain tumours and traffic accident head injuries. Some extremely sad stories and so much hope and love too. The one that got me was the teenager (head injury) who was obviously in the care system and had no one visit.

Which is what is lovely about this board because we all care about our children.

We also had a lot of snobbery about not going to a RG uni and also for not even putting them down as choices but they didn't offer the right courses DD wanted to pursue and she'd gone to a closed open day in lockdown to Chichester and fell in love with it (and the amazing library) then went to a proper open day and it cemented her opinion. Since when we mention she's going there 50% of the replies are v positive saying it is excellent for education and the other half glaze as it's not what they are hoping to hear.

@ZandathePanda it's brilliant to hear the other side of this debate as I have one v vocal woman on my social media who is all about totally closed toilet doors etc and her reasons are v valid too but it's healthy to see the other side discussed.
Thanks for the video tip. We have uni students living next door to us and I always advise them to take pics of the garden as the letting agency shaft them when they leave - we lend them garden tools and use of our green bin. Good tip re water bill responsibility however if all DC are advised against doing the elec/gas who will take it on 😂

Anne yes -in my post I meant mixed sex not unisex (!) - but thanks for taking my points on toilets on board. I have so many other reasons (safety, hygiene etc) for them being mixed sexed too but that’s for another board. I think the RG stuff is getting less important as is Oxbridge. Luckily DD’s course is ideal for her and means she is closer than she wanted to us. Older Dd was v specific about she wanted and narrowed it down to 2 universities. A main thing is value for money particularly when now the loan is coming out of her pay check. Dd1 had a poor 2nd year experience due to the pandemic but that was unavoidable. Her course was brilliant and she loved Newcastle and made the most of all the opportunities so it felt worth it.
I think the market has definitely changed now more people go to Uni and that loans are so big.
Also you mentioned bills - if all on this board end up paying water that’s a success (!) - older Dd’s peers are still in dispute over bills and they graduated last July! Dd and flatmates got done for £99 not weeding the 3 paving slabs in front of her house that looked like a pavement extension or taking the weeds growing out the yard wall (which were already there but smaller and not touched incase they were holding up the wall). The landlord tried to claim for split tiles, broken door, broken wardrobe etc but she had photo evidence so he didn’t chase that.

….For toilets NOT being mixed sex. Oh dear god. This is what tiredness and menopause does to you. I really should read over my posts.

anyway… back to Uni/gap year children….

@OrangeCinnamonLatte

Thank you!

there is a lovely bookshop in Chichester called Kim's Bookshop. It is very narrow and packed to the rafters with old books. sounds amazing. I shall make sure I go and look it up.

@MargaretThursday if you’re ever up North, Barter books in Alnwick is heaven.

The library and librarians are amazing . When Dd was little I used to borrow the book packs for teachers in the sumer hols , it was a teaching resource so a great big book and puppets etc!

@ZandathePanda it's great to hear from you, I wondered how you and dd were getting on. I know you've posted occasionally on the uni thread too. Dd sounds very brave. I hope she gets where she wants. I've mentioned before that ds3 was diagnosed with epilepsy age 3. No where near what you've been through and Ds can't remember any of it, so that is a good thing. It literally the started the day he his pre school vaccines age 3. He was having up to 100 seizures a day. But after 4 weeks of medication he never had a another. He came off meds after 5 years. But he's now due some of those vaccines again as he's in year 9 now. I don't know what to do. I've declined them for the moment. But I'm really worried about him having them. I have put them to the back of my mind for the moment.

For what it’s worth, Dd had all her vaccines even the extra meningitis one and HPV before the encephalitis and all the covid ones after(extra as she was medically vulnerable) all with no problems. She had several Pfizer and then Moderna. No reactions other than a sore arm but I gave her a paracetamol just in case as I got a bit of a headache for a few hours.
Because she was medically vulnerable the first couple were in a hospital setting.
They never identified which virus managed to penetrate through the barrier to her brain. They tested for all the usual suspects but not for covid as it was before testing. I was a bit tense about the vaccines but the doctors thought it was fine. There has been encephalitis cases with covid itself but it’s rare, I don’t know about seizures from vaccines though.
Pm’d you some other info you may find useful x

Re bills, dd and flatmates next year are using a company that does them all then they split the cost. I think there's a set amount per month to which will be good for budgeting.

Goodness @ZandathePanda what a journey, what an ordeal. Wishing you all the very best in the coming months.

Well done Mummyinbeds dd.

That all sounds really good Seeline. She'll thrive I'm sure.

Sorry to hear that Zebra. Is it febrile, or more serious?

Ds1 phoned tonight. One of his closest friends from his halls is in hospital, being diagnosed as Type 1 diabetic, so that is truely shit. I will support if I can.

How lovely you could borrow the book packs from there @OrangeCinnamonLatte. Very impressed with the resources there and i was at Winchester Uni too.

@NCTDN is that company Utility Warehouse?

What a shock for your son's friend @Oblomov23. It's so lovely you want to support him.

DS has managed to negotiate bills for 2 years without problems. I think last year they took one each. This year the gas/electric was ended by previous tenants but his group never gave names to the company when they moved in so they just get a monthly bill for 'the occupiers' which they just pay straight away. It has made budgeting much easier although not sure how long they will be able to continue!
DSs main job is to make sure everyone registers for their Council Tax exemption each year. For new renters next year, there is usually some sort of certificate on the uni student portal, personalised for each student confirming course dates etc, which can be downloaded to submit with the local authority exemption application which makes things easier.

@icanbewhatiwant when DS was due his first jabs I had a few questions about something I was aware of through my work so I asked the GP, he didn't really know, but put me in contact with the vaccination consultant in our health authority who was happy to speak to me and put my mind at rest, it might be worth asking at your GP if there is a specialist you could speak to.

@ZandathePanda good to hear from you again, I remember you posting about DD before, what a lot you have all been through, I'm glad she's got her uni course locally, that sounds like a very sensible plan.

@Oblomov23 the poor friend, that's really hard. DH was diagnosed with T1 at uni, fortunately he was only about an hour away from home so his family was able to support him.

Another positive vote for Chichester uni and the city here, DS did apply there and of his 5 choices it is the one I would have chosen for myself. We live within an hour or so and anyone you ever meet who is in a sport related profession around here always seems to be an ex Chi student.

DS is in reading week now, says there's hardly anyone around, he has an assignment to submit tomorrow then he's coming home on Friday. Hockey match on Saturday hopefully, then we are off to visit family for a couple of days. DD (y12) is frazzled as she has end of term exams tomorrow and Friday. We are slowly coming round to thinking she should be assessed for ADHD before she goes to uni. Lots to think about.

@ZandathePanda wow that is a lot to go through. I’ve coincidentally given DD those big hugs before reading - somewhat unwelcome as in a public place but I enjoyed them 😄

I’ve tagged a flying visit (dinner last night basically) onto a work trip to Manchester. Would have taken her out for coffee or lunch today too but she’s got straight four hours of lectures followed by (overlapping) varsity sports against Edge Hill. So I’ll go for a mooch round then get the train home. We’re picking her up for Easter on Saturday though 🤦‍♀️

@ZandathePanda ,@Oblomov23 ,thanks , definitely not febrile, there have been a number,and she hasn’t had a temperature. She can’t see when they are happening. She has also lost words and her coordination is poor, she falls over a lot. It is a worry.

Feeling very lucky that we have not had to deal with any major health scares, best wishes to those of you who are.

I had a very late night last night supporting DS1 in the proof reading of his dissertation. I was super proud of myself for picking up pseudohyperaldosteronism when he meant pseudohypoaldosteronism - the difference between hyper and hypo is one of those silly situations where 2 letters gives an opposite meaning. It probably gave him a false sense of security though, as I am sure there are other things I missed. He submitted it around 1am, 11 hours before the final deadline. I thought he would have a sense of release, but he is fretting because he wants a First and he is just over the threshold for the exams he has done so far, so it could still go either way. He was always like that - at school he would get over the A* threshold in 2/3 exams, but he has worked much harder at university. I told him that a 2.i would be a great result, but he disagreed. He seems to think they get the marks back in just over a week, which sounds unlikely to me.

For future reference - if you help your DC with dissertations, I think it is worth trying to get to grips with the marking schemes early - I did not see anything until late on Monday night, which did not give me much time to absorb enough to be helpful. All I did was SPAG/cross referencing checks, but could have helped with structure if I had the stuff earlier, I was never going to be any help with the science as that is way beyond me.

Goodness, those health scares are, indeed, scary. DD has now finished classes until after Easter, and she has handed in two of her three End Of Module projects (one is a two-minute animation of a scene from one of her own stories, which to my untrained eye looks professional in quality). She plans to finish the third, plus a required essay, next week (down in Cambridge) and will then get a series of trains all the way up to SW Scotland where we'll be staying for a week (while DW and DS do a windsurfing course). What could possibly go wrong?

I have to get through half a day tomorrow and then I'm on my Easter holidays too. Tomorrow p.m. might possibly see me in the pub with colleagues. Who might then possibly carry on into the evening with a curry or something. Can't wait!

Oh, and DD has paid the deposit for her start-of-second year "fieldwork" trip. Each year the second-year illustrators and their drawing lecturers spend a week in a city with Very Different Architecture, drawing pretty much non-stop. It's meant to be an intense experience... this year, the destination is Seville!!!

Ds had his last lecture on weds. next one is 24th April. No idea when or if he will come home between now and then. He said he probably will. 🤞

I went to get DS on Wednesday, left here at 6.30am (after being awake from 3.30am) and we were back just before noon so not a bad run really. Obviously we have only seen him for approx. 2 hours since then, feels very much like Christmas when we barely saw him for the first week home.

Dd came home on Tuesday and has definitely made her presence felt! We went to her sixth form speech night last night. Dh was miffed that although she got the RS prize, she’d been missed off the list of exhibition winners (those who got 3xA or better). To DD’s embarrassment, he raised it with the deputy head at the end! 😂

Dd had told me she’d chosen a Psychology book as her RS prize - but I hadn’t realised she’d asked for ‘Psychology Statistics for Dummies’!

@crazycrofter I would be like your DH 🤣 DS was in a ski race when he was 6. He was miffed he didn't get on the podium in the u12 category so I queried it. He'd been entered into the men's race and come 5th (ahead of DH) and won the u12's by quite a margin. They got him a gold medal but he didn't get the glory (and thank goodness they didn't take the medal off the boy who did receive it)

I'm collecting DS after work as he was supposed to have a tutorial and seminar this afternoon. He's on his way to A&E instead following a football injury last night. He can't walk, his room isn't packed, he's on the second floor. I'm not happy. We also go on holiday tomorrow and his clothes need washing. I just need to get stuck in the Rutland mud and my day will be complete 😭

Oh no @mummyinbeds that sounds really stressful! Our Christmas pick up was awful - we’d just moved into new house, we were in chaos and had a flood from burst pipes the night before. We’d had no sleep and dh insisted on going to ikea in Nottingham first so we got to Rutland about 10pm! Dd was suffering the effects of a night out and had barely packed anything! We got home so late and dd started moaning about the wet carpet and lack of anywhere to put anything which didn’t go down well… This time she managed to be much more organised!

Really hope your ds hasn’t done any serious damage and you survive pick up. Can the washing be done on holiday? It’s taken two days to get the through DD’s (she goes away tomorrow).