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.

🤣🤣 @ealingwestmum - aren’t they amusing?

I should have guessed this would happen- the day before his internship last year he ranted about how he was selling out to the corporate machine and why was he even DOING THIS, then came back beaming after the first day brandishing a free, branded, aluminium water bottle saying “Look! They just GAVE it to me!”

ah, principles are cheap 🤑

Haha @Delphigirl , I love it!

Enjoy the break @24newernames , dip your toe in at least :)

i know the quiet is bittersweet @OublietteBravo, but hope life settles to a new norm quickly.

@ealingwestmum Sadly not me on holiday, but Seeline 😀

Oh I’m so sorry! In spirit then 😱

@Delphigirl That sums it all up in a nutshell!

DD went to an Open Day at a National Trust conservation/restoration centre at the weekend (which my in-laws had spotted, and they met her there to treat her to a meal etc). She is now even more enthusiastic about restoring historic items as a career, which has been on her radar for a while. She already volunteers doing semi-skilled artwork-cleaning at a local museum.

She now plans to complete her illustration degree, come and live at home for a year (hurray!) with a day-job doing anything while she tries to sell art as a sideline, and save some money for the highly specialised two-year course that's needed to become a conservator. It's only offered at a handful of places in the UK. Very luckily we and my in-laws have savings we had earmarked for a house deposit for her, so she can raid those if need be, but that's very much her call.

That's funny about the coat @Delphigirl

Great news that DD has settled on a career plan @PhotoDad

I need advice from parents of girls. DD (18) has got an interview for a part time job in a garden centre and nothing to wear. She lives in jeans and merch tee shirts/hoodies. She's never really had an interview before, her first job she got because she knew the business owner and her second she walked in on seeing a poster and was offered it on the spot. Would it be a bad move to wear smart black jeans and a fitted plain tee with black brogues, make up and tied back hair. What do they wear? She is not into clothes and fashion at all.

Dress has changed so much for all jobs @EternallyDelighted that I can’t really give much advice. My gut would say what she plans to wear sounds totally acceptable, how she presents herself with confidence and enthusiasm for the role is more key.

@photodad I think that sounds a great plan for DD. I think you have one of the two best courses in the UK in Cambridge, no? The other being the Courtauld of course. Unless she feels like immersing herself for a few years in Italy… mmm, tempting.

@EternallyDelighted i think that sounds absolutely fine. I think if she goes too smartly dressed they will think she doesn’t understand the job! Clean tidy practical clothes sounds right to me.

Ps the last I heard DDs rucksack did not manage to accompany her to Cuzco from Lima… sigh. I suppose I will hear how that story ends at Christmas!

@Delphigirl Oh no, I hope that the backpack turns up! You're right about conservation courses, but Cambridge and the Courtauld specialise in restoring paintings. DD wants to work with textiles (historic clothing in particular; she has loads of pattern-books, and hand-sews clothes for dolls as a hobby). Apparently there are two big names for that, which are Glasgow and Lincoln. The textile conservators she spoke to had all been to one of those two.

Glasgow takes a small, mainly international, cohort and costs literally twice as much as Lincoln. Their course isn't eligible for the postgrad loan. Lincoln is part-run by the university's own conservation consultancy, which has worked on a lot of high-profile restorations. Who knew? (I love these glimpses into worlds that are entirely new to me.)

That sounds like a great career plan @PhotoDad

@Delphigirl - really hope rucksack turns up!

I think DS definitely intends to sell out if the right job comes up... He has final stage interview for some company in Newcastle on Thursday and then next week is second go at RAF medical. Am carb loading him this week to try and negate the high protein from last time! He says he definitely doesn't want to stay for Masters sadly but I see his point about already massive student debt....

Oh that sounds fab @photodad, I absolutely love textiles and have spent many happy hours pulling out drawers in the bowels of the v&A to see the treasures it contains. I can totally see the attraction of that and costume conservancy. I’m excited for her!
@craggyrat , good luck to DS for the interview and the medical! A masters is always open to him and often better to take a few years in the workplace before going onto postgrad study. And sometimes you can get an employer to pay…

I expect I will only hear more about the rucksack if it is gone forever and requires an (expensive) insurance claim. Thank goodness I made her wear her hiking boots on the plane. She has size 10, narrow feet and it took us so long to find any that fit - these are some obscure Italian men’s brand. She would never manage to replace them in Peru!

Hope it turns up @Delphigirl . Thank goodness about the boots.

@PhotoDad I think they said something about that at the Lincoln open day I went to with DD recently, we went to the history subject talk. Exciting! It's heritage month here and one of the things they do is open up the county costume collection for viewing, there must be people working away in the background on all these things.

What a great career idea @photodad! I would have loved to work in museums after my history degree and considered a Museum Studies masters but my parents thought opportunities would be scarce so I did a PGCE and hated it 🤣 and somehow ended up in accountancy! However my parents happily supported my sister to do an archives masters ten years later 🤣 and her job in a very old school sounds fascinating.

Hope the backpack turns up @Delphigirl ! Good luck to ds for his interview and medical @craggyrat - seems like he’s the most organised young person in this group 🤣 Dd intends on a gap year, working as a carer and travelling after her degree and then hopefully getting a role which will be a stepping stone towards clinical psychology- but it’s very competitive so we will see!

Thanks for comments re interview wear, I think you are right, things are generally more casual in the workplace nowadays and it is not an environment where smart clothing would be required, clean, tidy and unobtrusive casual is the way to go. Hope she gets it, she could really do with a break after applying unsuccessfully for so many over the summer

Good luck to dd @EternallyDelighted , hope she gets the job. I agree with the advice re clothing too. Dd usually wears black trousers with a polo neck jumper tucked in and a black leather (smart style) jacket, but she’s not really got sensible shoes so I think she wears converse. She’s got a few jobs dressed like that!

@EternallyDelighted DD went to her one and only job interview in school uniform (polo shirt and hoody plus black Airforce trainers, not even a smart uniform) in year 11. She still works there in the holidays so can't have made too bad an impression. She still wears the same pair of trainers for work too 🤣 Good luck to your DD.

These are DD's old school shoes, she's had them since y7 as her feet stopped growing very early! They are a bit worn but look OK otherwise, the only other things she has are trainers, crocs and walking boots. Actually she has some smart trainers which she bought for prom but they've never seen the light of day again, she tends to have one pair and wear them till they fall to pieces.

Love the Paris coat, classically smart.

Just got back from Cyprus, it was fabulous, very hot when we visited Famagusta (where we lived before being bombed out in 74) for the day.

Ds comes home Thurs, this year he got allocated the worst apartment for his stay, I'll drop him there to Aldgate on Sunday.

@mummyinbeds DS1 did that too for his JL job but it was formal uniform. I think her outfit sounds abolutely fine @EternallyDelighted

Good luck to your DS for his interview @craggyrat

@Delphigirl I'm also a sucker for a freebie so don't blame your DS! 😂 Fingers crossed that you DD's rucksack arrives soon.

Urgh, the cursed luggage challenges, also hoping it turns up @Delphigirl without too much delay. DD has invested heavily in AirTags after this year’s fiasco.

🤞for your lovely boy @craggyrat , he (on the tinternet at least) appears to have a quiet, calm but steely approach to his stuff, really hope he secures both opportunities.

We did talk about getting an AirTag @ealingwestmum but didn’t actually do it… story of my life!

@PhotoDad I've sent you a pm. Hope that's ok.

I wonder if you lot could all help me. It's actually re Ds2. I'm having a bit of a trouble. Did any of you do this before, or help you older child, or your dc from this thread, when they did GCSE's. Do you have any suggestions for how to create a decent timetable, plus a list of the topics they need to study, in a manageable format. ( I didn't need to with ds1, but ds2 is too laid back). Any suggestions at all?

I have gone to quite a bit of bother already and achieved little. See attached. School sent me some links, eg the Edexcel or AQA syllabus, but it is so vague, so massive. Contains 50 pages of mostly drivel. When what you really want is a simple excel page of say 70 lines, i.e. manageable for all the topics they need to study for all 10 subjects - eg Maths, English Lit, Geography etc. With just a simple list of the 60 topics they need to learn. I mean for English if you are studying say Romeo and Juliet, Poetry etc you just want a list of the 24 things you need to study.

Even my IT guy at work said the Edexcel syllabus itself they had deliberately formatted it in a way that made it hard to download from pdf to excel. See the maths tab in attached doc.

Any suggestions? Any excel wizz here?