Thread 53 - Covid GCSE Cohort - Happy New Year 2025 to our fab young people

[Delphigirl]

New thread! Looking forward to traversing 2025 with this fantastic group 🎉😘

@crazycrofter Yes Ds has enjoyed the placement. Unfortunately the company is having a restructuring so they are not offering placements for 25/26 and no guarantee they will be offering graduate jobs either. But the experience has been good.

I have to say I am worried about job prospects/job security for youngsters at the moment. Ds1 has a graduate job but they don't seem to have enough work to keep him busy, so I'm worried they will let him go.

I could have both ds's back home!

My nephew has been doing an apprenticeship (not in the UK) and has been let go before he has completed it as the company has been struggling.

If that poster is on HE threads then I know who it is !

That poster and threads like that are one of the reasons this thread is where it is and not in HE.

I was right!

The job situation worried me too @Decorhate everything seems so insecure compared to when I was their age. Most of my older colleagues on my placement year and my first graduate job were lifers in the companies, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing (resulted in a lot of people killing time waiting for their final salary pensions) but preferable to the insecurity and hard market that exists now. And to go back to that other thread I REALLY don’t need someone womansplaining to me that the DCs should have thought of all this when choosing their degrees, yes I know, but it seems very mercenary and whatever happened to just loving a subject.

The job situation worries me too, I struggled to get a job when i graduated, so been down that path and know people can get back on their feet, it might be a bit slower than those who got jobs straight away, but with determination they can get there.

@Decorhate what is your ds1 doing? And what’s your nephew’s apprenticeship in? I’m trying to work out what the safer ‘industries’ are! But there probably aren’t any, it’s a tough world out there to graduate into.

@Seeline i just looked at that thread to see if it was the poster I was thinking of. Yep, it was 😂
I had a fallout with her years ago and her ‘superior’ knowledge…
Blimey can you imagine what she’s like in real life 🤷‍♀️

@crazycrofter Ds1 is working in construction project management. Construction always seems to be first affected during recessions...

Nephew was doing a motor mechanic apprenticeship. Which you would think would be fairly recession proof. Especially as most cars in his country are secondhand imports.

@Decorhate my DS has just started as a Graduate quantity surveyor. There seemed to many grad scheme jobs advertised when he was applying. Several companies that he got through to later rounds with were saying that they were actually taking on additional grads. The job he is in wasn't due to start until September, but they needed him to start early. They all seemed positive with the Government's wishes to build infrastructure and houses, so fingers crossed 🤞🏼.

Goodness gracious! The swords are truly out on said thread, no more nice Mr guy!

@Decorhate & @Seeline Good luck to the boys on their placements.

I remember a thread I started about Plymouth Uni, among others - that poster was very opinionated about both the uni and the city, although it wasn't clear whether she'd ever been there!? However, her dd had just happened to pass through on her way somewhere and declared it a 'shithole' so that was that, why on earth would my dd consider studying there!?

Those do seem like sectors you'd consider to be 'safe bets' @Decorhate - very worrying 🙁

Thing is we never come across completely as ourselves online. It can be hard expressing clarity and intention through text. I've made some mild jokes on MN before that i felt fell flat and was mortified, I've also posted (nicely) about a topic i wanted to learn more about and was hoping for engaging conversation, it tanked! for some reason people thought i was being nasty, there were cries of 'Troll!" to my dismay and the thread was zapped. For all we know, said poster, could be absolutely lovely in real life but their writing style is a bit off.

Could be, I don’t think it is ill-intentioned but she’s like a dog with a bone, just won’t let go. I must admit I stick to either long running threads like this or the sort where you put in one opinion like which of these two colours should I paint my living room and don’t get sucked into much else nowadays.

A slightly obscure question about firm and insurance offers - ds has his grades, so we assumed his offers would all be unconditional. In reality they are, but the one he decided to firm has been issued as a conditional offer - because he needs to send them his results by 31st August. This means he's been able to choose an insurance too on UCAS, which seems good to me as he's still abroad and hasn't been able to visit anywhere yet. If he visits both and prefers his insurance, can he pull out of his firm and will the insurance then kick in?

I don't think you can. I've looked on UCAS and it seems that even if you don;t get the results you have to wait for the firm to either accept you with what you have or release you.

The only thing he can do is make the alteration within 14 days of accepting.

Oh dear, maybe I should have waited as he’s due back not long after deadline. Having said that I think his insurance choice has been in clearing before so hopefully all is not lost!

DS will be finishing his industrial placement year at the end of June. (Software engineer in major defence company). Informally, he has been verbally asked whether he's happy to rejoin them after he graduates in 2026 from his line manager which is really promising (still has to go through HR presumeably so let's see). He has been treated really well and has had loads of relevant programming training (alongside his team). He has spent the year sitting next to/opposite his line manager and his manager's manager which was helpful and they obviously got along! His C++ programming skills have come on in leaps and bounds now that he is applying them in RL applications. He has also had project lead and interviewing experience, having been pushed by his small team to take those opportunities! The defence sector is definitely still recruiting.

That’s brilliant @sansou ! Well done to your Ds for doing so well and impressing them!

Great to hear positive job news from @seeline and @sansou

Fingers crossed for @Decorhate DS and nephew. Another surprised those sectors are not looking resilient. Done a lot of driving this week and there seem to be cranes/roadworks everywhere. I thought the government wants a house building frenzy?

I’ve been asked by someone senior at work if I’ll talk to her niece about STEM careers. In exchange she’s offered to talk to DD about careers in business/marketing. Perhaps I do have a useful network.

That's great @sansou sounds as though he's had a brilliant year.

DS has got an interview, for a one year internship that he really, really wants, it would be just the thing to kickstart his career, doesn't need a driving licence either for the work or to get there - he would have to find a shared house but the location is well served by public transport.

DS is on his way back to Newcastle in readiness for term starting on Monday. So DH and I are back to living on our own for the next 4 weeks. Since DD is about to graduate, it will likely be our final period of having the house to ourselves for a while.

Good news @sansou, it’s lovely to hear of them making progress. The provider for the year abroad is oversubscribed for Dds course of choice, but offered to consider for a more challenging alternative, with coding involved. To my surprise, after the initial shock, she said yes please. She has an A-level in Computer Programming but only did it because she liked a boy, and was grateful to get a C. So her summer will be spent trying to get her coding up to scratch. Our youngest ds has bought a house, so we are tentatively beginning to believe we may get some time to ourselves soon, although the situation with dgs is still very difficult as his nursery can’t / wont accommodate him, so it looks likeIll be doing a lot of peripatetic grannying.

That's brilliant @ExpensiveDecoration - all the best to him for the interview! When is it?

@OublietteBravo enjoy! We've had quite a bit of time on our own since ds went away in December, but dd pops home quite regularly. Ds has decided he might actually come home mid May, as he's finding one of his travel mates increasingly frustrating (negative, doesn't want to do anything, shuts down conversations he's not interested in etc). We advised him to come home, earn some more money and maybe do Laos and Thailand another time, with the right friends! So we'll have both around intermittently from June to September.

@Zebracat that's very brave of her, hope she can get up to speed! And I hope your dgs can be found a nursery place which will accommodate him. How much peripatetic grannying are you doing?!