Thread 50 - Covid GCSE Cohort - New Year of Adulting

[OrangeSpicedBun]

2024 here we are... our young people are still getting used to adulting and we're still doing that adulting thing ...it's tough !

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). 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
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/parents_of_adult_children/4922401-thread-49-covid-gcse-cohort-the-nights-are-drawing-in?page=10

Oh dear @Seeline , both mine have that approach to work too! Hope he’s right about the extension and gets it done in time!

Enjoy your holiday @craggyrat !

Thanks @ealingwestmum . They turned up - they’d fallen off her chest of drawers into a drawer which was slightly open! Ds is planning to look at a car he’s seen online - but the google reviews of the car dealership seem to mainly say they’re cowboys selling dodgy cars! He’s just lost £500 on his motorbike so he could do without another bad purchasing decision.

@craggyrat that sounds blissful. Enjoy.

(I'm reading all posts, even if I'm not responding to all).

@crazycrofter I love how independent your DS is. And I love that you allow him space to think for himself even if he does make mistakes along the way. It makes me think I need to step back and let my two get on with it more.

@mummyinbeds he doesn’t really give us much choice! We just keep offering the advice; sometimes he takes it but often he seems to have to learn from making his own mistakes!

@crazycrofter must be a relief DD found the key. You need to get her one of these - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tile-Bluetooth-Locator-Compatible-Android/dp/B09998MBFM/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=1N17BMBPX6GOS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y3hOQlEvyr7GW_Fb_dBlxMQKx4AHa4Cv7GPxi70s0pXCeHYId3M2KNRFc2HRlyk51jVaxwMwFBe7a7cN23Ig1KjPbgje7JK1Bca8RzQWrG18dknk2SEg8eyKZid0IMepTMKI-9cES6vTCDQHLj_atCppnso3wkGTxKI6moUEyRbxov0ibupEERjNjhCwOBFiQMuhLbCUgbl0cFLVqrwv4byUDLMWkjmqxqTw7IBO3_8.5TqAuUtiYflAiz7pxFxkfCM6oYhyrqTQwjON3FxPnDo&dib_tag=se&keywords=tile+mate&qid=1714342257&sprefix=tile+mate%2Caps%2C94&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

I assume you have told DS that insurance is often more expensive than the car for a new driver, so he should get insurance quotes before he gets the car.

@craggyrat how lovely!

Great idea @Monkey2001 , with only one car key it’s a bit of a worry that it will happen again.

Yes he’s done all the insurance quotes and talked us into helping with the cost!

@crazycrofter the other thing which took us by surprise was the variation in road tax. DS1's little 2003 1.2 Micra is £200/year, DS2 drives our 2011 1.6 diesel Skoda which has no road tax and lower insurance.

Following the discussion of broken down cars, ours turned out to be "phase separation" in the fuel tank which I ended up sorting myself. The RAC man had shown me how to extract fuel on its way to the engine and, as my mechanic didn't want to get involved, I pumped through 10 litres and got through to good fuel and it then worked. He ended up helping me to put the battery back (I re-charged as pumping fuel through had drained it) and gave me 10/10 for determination. Phase separation happens when there is enough water in the tank to cause ethanol to separate from the petrol in the tank, you then get a watery ethanol mix coming through which stalls the engine. Our mechanic said he would not use cheap unleaded (10% ethanol) in his car because of the things ethanol does, so I filled up with the premium stuff (5% ethanol) and the car drove beautifully to Manchester. A picture of some of the fuel I extracted, number 5 shows it most clearly. So I guess this is a "heads up" about cheap unleaded.

Monkey - That is both impressive (you) and scary (ethanol variances) in equal measures!

That is impressive and interesting! I always use the cheap unleaded as my car is not a performance type at all, maybe I should reconsider. Re the car tax, my previous car was the same as my current one except current is hybrid and the old one was petrol with stop start technology. Same model, same engine size. The old one's tax was about £35 on the basis of the stop start thing being good for the environment at the time (2009) and this one's £190 despite doing far better mpg (2018). Seems a lot depends on what the govt was thinking at the time the car was registered.

@EffortlessDistraction my 10 year old diesel, not deemed fit to drive into city centres due to it's terribly polluting emissions, is zero car tax. Bonkers. It does have stop start but it doesn't work anymore.

Just recently discovered the new car tax regime as looking for a new car. Our 2013 and 2015 diesel cars are zero and £30. Now all have a basic £190 but if the list price is over £40k they have a supplement of £410 making it £600 for years 2-6 I think. Explains why everything I saw was either £190 or £600!! £600 is a big wedge to find each year

Glad your DD found the key @crazycrofter DS only has one key but keeps an Apple AirTag on it to help him not lose it.

Blimey Monkey that's impressive! How is your PhD Chemistry going?

@Monkey2001 That is determined & impressive!

@craggyrat Hope you are having a wonderful time.

Wow, @Monkey2001, amazing fault-finding.

Have a great time, @craggyrat!

We also have a ten-year-old diesel which doesn't meet ULEZ rules but has no car tax. It makes very little sense to me.

DD called tonight to say that Year 2 is done! She has handed in both of her portfolios with a few days to spare, and is now going to take a few days "off" without working on her personal projects, just to chill and recover. One of the portfolios was an entire illustrated book; it only had to be short, but she decided to take the opportunity to work on one of her own stories. Character design attached.

Thanks for the nice comments, I was just telling the story, not looking for glory!

Re low car tax on old diesels, it was based on CO2 emissions, but ULEZ is based on NOX. Diesels tend to be very good for CO2 but bad for NOX. NOX is not a problem in less densely populated areas as it disperses, so the ideal is low NOX for cities and low CO2 for long journeys. From DVLA website first year road tax varies massively and is £2,745 for the highest CO2 emitters! The extra £410 pa is only for years 2-6 of ownership, goes back down to £190 after that. In a few years there won't be many cars left with low tax, so March 2017 low tax cars should be valuable!

I've just asked DH how much his 2013 diesel tax is and that was £190 too.

@craggyrat Hope you're having a great time!

@Seeline funny you should mention your ds's dissertation, DS1 graduated last yr and I've never laid eyes on his dissertation. I remember when DH and i did ours we printed and binded (got it bound??) and the first page had a dedication to our parents on it 😏when i asked DS for his (mainly to see what he wrote on the dedication page he said he couldn't as he didn't print it out & it was all online etc which I understand. Do people still write all that cringey stuff in their dissertations or has that all gone out of fashion now?

I'm pretty sure I didn't write anything like that on mine and I cannot imagine my parents reading it (it was as boring as anything, no idea how I ended up with the topic I did). I typed it up on an Amstrad word processor and bound it with one of those machines that punches holes all along it and threads a plastic thing through them all. We did our finals in Feb then worked on it full time partied for the rest of the year.

That was SUCH a good summer, happy days.

@EffortlessDistraction They didn't read it, just the dedication page! it was a common thing to do in my home country, perhaps its not really a thing here at all. Typed mine all up in WordPerfect 5.1 then got it bound professionally . DH did his exactly like yours.

@Shimy yes mine had a thank you page - my supervisor and my mum who typed it all for me. Must have been very strange typing thanks to herself 🤣. Just too old for necessary access to word processors - most of my year paid for one of the departmental secretaries to type theirs. It was a nightmare writing all the drafts by hand, and then posting chapters backwards and forwards to home, desperately hoping that my mum hadn't made a typo that would mean sending it back again!
And yes - the queue in the library on the last couple of days with every third year trying to bind two copies - one for marking and one for the library (I think - although that seems very weird now! It was definitely two copies though). Then we had our finals.

The only reason we had a word processor was that DMum taught secretarial skills so we were always ahead of the game with typewriters, tippex, carbon paper etc in our house. I have happy memories of Wordperfect in my first job

My year placement project was handwritten and photocopied,it is immaculate, I have a copy on my desk at work because unlike the other one it is still interesting. No way I could produce something like that so neatly now.

@EffortlessDistraction I had WordPerfect in my first job. I was devastated when they switched to Word and I had to start using a mouse instead of key strokes for bold etc. it was many years later I discovered you could use key strokes with Word, but by then I'd got so used to a mouse, it seemed pointless trying to learn them all.

@EffortlessDistraction my mum taught IT as well. We visited the science museum at half term and I sent her a picture of "Lotus 123" in a display case 🤣 she was rathered shocked it was considered a museum piece!