Thread 52 - Covid GCSE Cohort - Autumn 24 - Start of Uni Yr 3

[Oblomov24]

2024 Autumn, start of year 3 for those at Uni.

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.

51 Previous thread - 51.

Hope you are feeling better tomorrow @PhotoDad

Sounds fun @Seeline
Your DD sounds like mine. Cant possibly manage everything she might need in the train if coming home longer than a weekend 😆

Sorry to hear about @BlueMarigold & @Delphigirl.

To be fair DD is barely over 5', size 8 and has hypermobility issues so does have some excuses! But yes, a big suitcase on a a pre-Christmas train, and crossing London midway was just too much

DD is on her way home.. the train line has been closed due to an 'incident' and she has been sat on the train not moving for the last two hours... While I have some sympathy, my thoughts go out to the family involved. So tough at this time of year for so many 😔

Oh no.

Oh that is so sad. I hope your DD gets home soon.

I have one child home for Christmas, via a compulsory trip to Primark (6 hours round trip to the nearest Primark from Aber🤣) The other one sent photos of a snow capped Pyrenees - a very out of character hiking trip apparently.

Hope your DD made it home eventually @handmademitlove

She made it home 2.5 hours late so I guess on the plus side her delay repay will cover the cost of the ticket! Not a great start to the holidays - which will mainly be revision for January exams / dissertation / figuring out what next year will look like if they don't reinstate her to her 4 year course and she has to finish in the summer after 3 years instead. Complaint is still ongoing from the summer!

Glad she got home in the end, the poor family and others involved though. I hope she gets the delay repay, I was nearly tearing my hair out trying to do one a couple of weeks ago (also 2.5 hours delay and £80 worth of ticket so worth it), computer said no, I had to print out a form and all the tickets and post it in the end. Then got an email saying “we are overwhelmed, it may take longer than usual”, this was Cross Country.

Oh no! Glad she got home.

@EternallyDelighted delay repay takes up a ridiculous amount of time in our house! My DH and other children all travel by train daily so lots of delays on a regular basis. The train company changed it's procedures and kept declining them and when we eventually got to the bottom of it, they have changed the rules so you can't claim for multiple people on one email any more.. so have to use different email accounts (and different payment accounts!) for each one. Clearly no-one has ever thought about how parents manage child accounts 🤦

Glad she got home safe.

DS had his assessment day yesterday for marketing job. There had been 1200 applicants. That's a frightening statistic when I think about his chances of actually getting a job at some point in his life. He thought it went okay but all the others were actually doing marketing degrees so that's not v hopeful!

Mine was declined because I had split save day return tickets, the web form was really unclear about returns (but the rules said you could get the whole return journey refunded if it is over 2 hours late) but because two of the tickets were “identical” (same reference, same date and same cost, the outward and return short parts of the journey) it wouldn’t accept it. It makes me angry because if someone like me who is computer literate and organised struggles how on earth are more vulnerable people, who are probably in greater need of the refund, supposed to do it. The journey was fairly hellish too, again, I coped OK, but not sure how anyone with certain vulnerabilities would have coped, there was no food on the train, half the toilets were broken, standing room only for long parts of it and full of (luckily good-natured) football fans. We were allowed off for 20 mins at one point but I lost my seat by doing so. Grrr. It was because of mechanical problems and short-staffing so there are clearly deeper problems. One of the football fans told me this was fairly normal for that service.

Sorry, rant over.

I miss the days where you got on a train and just bought a ticket....!

The rail system is so complicated ñow! My younger children have season tickets but when they turn 16, and again at 18, the tickets change. And you can't do them in advance of their birthday. And they need different photo cards. And their tickets are all electronic anyway!

It is one of the jobs I happily delegate to DH 🙂

And don't get me started on the fact that at 16-17 you can have a railcard that works for short peak time college runs but as soon as you hit 18 you are onto the student one which is only valid for fares over £12 at peak times, DD now takes the really slow bus instead because it's much cheaper.

@EternallyDelighted oh yes. Or that season tickets can be bought in advance to run for 4 months after they turn 18 - so dd1 with a spring birthday was fine until study leave for exams, but ds1 with autumn birthday will have months of school on full fares. Fortunately he passed his driving test so will be driving to school once we reach that point!

DS is finally home for Xmas . He's done 4 mths of his 12 months placement and brimming with news. He's discussed the ongoing bed bug infestation in his house in minutiae detail lovely. We even have photos of the little blighters at different stages of their development.

We've now moved on to more frivolous matters such as his work, training and forthcoming exams and most of all how wonderful it is to be back home in his clean bed with the lovely view of trees from his window.

DS1 has brought him up to date with new purchases we've made in the house(been planning for these for a while now) new shed, our very first dishwasher - in ds2's words, 'the era of washing dishes is over!'. DS's response, 'Mum, have we landed some money?'

Aw, enjoy @Shimy , how lovely that he is spilling with news.

Mine’s airborne now. We stupidly thought we’d give her room a surprise makeover for her return. Never again. Fingers x’d she likes it, but I suspect her mum venturing into the kitchen to make chicken pie and brownies will generate more tears, I am not the cook of our household. Just do it for special occasions :)

DD has handed in her dissertation, on the slow disappearance of illustrations from standard editions of books (apart from kids' books); Victorian novels had loads of pictures when first published and they've disappeared! She is excited about her big Final Project which they start after New Year. She has written a little comic musical (well, the words, not the music), and will illustrate it by making puppets of the characters, and scenery, and photographing it, then turn it into a book. As you do.

We are all now in the Lakes for a few days with my in-laws and starting to feel festive.

Hurrrrraaaaahhhhhh I’m on holiday! Have been away for 5 days for work and have come back tonight before a HUGE Xmas party we are throwing tomorrow. Marquee attached to the house is up, caterers and bar guys turning up tomorrow, I can fit into my dress, all is right with the world. 3 of my chicks are home and the 4th coming back tomorrow. It’s Christmas!

Oooooh exciting! Happy homecoming!

Lovely news about kids coming home for Christmas. Conversation with DS today about the time of his flight on Friday started with, no DS, your flight is on Saturday 🤦‍♂️

@ealingwestmum I'm sure she'll love her room makeover. @Delphigirl Hope your party goes with a bang, it sounds marvellous and wish i could come. @PhotoDad Your DD's dissertation sounds very interesting. It's the sort of change that you just don't notice as it's so subtle. It was only when i read your post that I remembered those black and white sketches that used to be in books (i think that's what your talking about). Is there actually a reason for it? your DD sounds so very talented.