Finishing (not starting) Year 13 support thread (number 5!)

[Littleham]

Exam season starts....

mumslife!

Horsemad it seems strange that we've been checking in here with each other since last year, I agree. All those uni visits, filling out the ucas forms and agonising over the wait for offers. Thank goodness for you lot! Don't know what I would have done without you.

Dd and I were just saying today that it seemed quite realistic back then to accept AAB offers, or higher, but now the reality has hit, it's quite a commitment.

Good to hear your ds has been taken over by aliens found his mojo

Lol Fairenuff, he's driven me mad but maybe - just maybe we are getting somewhere now.

Antaresisastar blimey, hard going in your house atm! Hope everyone's staying sane.

I had a moment of despair earlier when I realised I have to go through this three more times. Mumsnet better still be here in six years' time!

Dd1 is another one with Eng Lit tomorrow - she has spent the day doing the final memorisation of all her quotations.

DS has decided he is going to write a terrible poetry essay tomorrow so has gone to bed early to prepare for the impending doom

Hopefully a good sleep will boost him for tomorrow NiceCardigan.

Checking in again. DD1 did business (or Economics) today and felt the first part went ok but the second part is a bit iffy! Have been testing her on quotes tonight for English Lit tomorrow. It doesn't help that my other DD has end of year exams coming up and wants me to help her revise as however hard I try I can't be in two rooms at once

Good luck everybody

Glad other people found the Chemistry difficult. So did DS (OCR). Though he gave answers to every question, most of which at least seemed right (his words).
Horsemad - glad your DS is showing signs of growing up. My DS has developed much more ownership of his work and revision requirements in the last few weeks too. I think they develop in jumps, rather than it being a smooth progression.

Hello everyone - my DD was very down after biology - even some tears - although mostly due to mega stress of two exams in one day. History much better. Biology was always going to be tough.

I feel very sorry for her, although she had pulled herself back together for revision by Tuesday. She has convinced herself, however, that she won't make her offer after biology. I try and say the right things. Very in need of hugs. At least I can do those. I think she's afraid now that the stress of having performed badly will put her off her English, which she normally does very well and really needs not to mess up, (although I try to say calming things etc).

She was talking to me about the particular "embarrassment" of not making an Oxbridge offer, after all the hoo ha over it. You try and be low key about it but in her school, an Oxbridge offer is not all that normal, so she thinks everyone will notice etc. They just don't need the extra stress - it's all so ghastly.

I think our lot have had it really bad with the end of January AS resits. They should have just ditched AS being a component grade altogether. If it had been as in my day you just sat your exams at the end of the two years and that was that. If you screwed up, you resat them and you still had end of year exams in Lower 6th so you got a heads up if you needed to step it up.

I've seen how much DD has matured and improved in this year whereas she was a bit giddy after her GCSE results and moving to 6th form college (her school didn't have a 6th form at the time) didn't unsettle her really but she certainly got into the social life a bit too much!

DD is still burning the midnight oil revising for AQA English Lit tomorrow. Her three books are Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein and Macbeth and she has a million flashcards scattered on her bedroom floor. I think I will have to go and tell her to call it a night in a moment.
This is the exam she is hoping to bank her A* in to achieve her firm offer so she is really stressing at the moment. Good luck to everyone!

Mine have all gone to bed around 11pm (GCSEs and A2s here) other than A2 Philosophy for DD today. She was up way past 1am revising Plato last night and slept through her alarm.

I've been reading TSR OCR Chem thread most saying how the exam needed to be about 30 mins longer to be able to fit everything in. (DS said same)
Almost all agreed how difficult it was and several would be medics really feeling like they've missed their grade.

Horrible time for them.

Figment, I know what you mean about Oxbridge. If dd had firmed Birmingham,for example, but got her insurance (Leeds) no one would really notice.

And she knows that she will be fortunate to get a place on any medicine course. But still...

Physics today, please let this be a normal exam!
Good Luck to all exam takers.

Dh and I were talking about this yesterday morning - there will be one or two family members who are bound to be vocally and tactlessly disappointed (e.g. stepMIL who was saying "when you go to Oxford" at bloody Christmas, before the offers were out).

We only want her to make her grades because she really liked her college. But she also loved Leeds and I know she'd have a great time there, and one of my best friends lives there so would be lovely to have an excuse to visit more! Anyway, last night she was saying supposing she got A A B (she is quite confident/hopeful for maths and English, the B would be in classics which is her uni subject!) - she thinks she would take a year out and reapply for something else! Argh, I thought we were at least near the end of this!

Good luck to everyone doing English or Physics (or anything else?) today! Hope the question setters have been straightforward

Yes good luck for today but I doubt the physics will be straight forward. All the science papers have been weird so far. DD2 has just sat AQA AS physics B and that was harder than normal too.

It is all so stressful. So far dd has found all the questions on every exam to be strange and not quite as expected. Can't see where she will get an A* at the moment. Fingers-crossed for English today.

Lol at the 1 bottle = 1 unit mumslife - if only

Just checking in. Son is down to his last GCSE next week and DD has gone off for her Eng.Lit. this morning with two more to go after that. All will done and dusted by this time next week!

She found the politics on Monday tough going and feels that she had no idea whether it went well or not. Today's exam is in theory her A* subject but it all feels in the lap of the gods right now!

We are in the home straight now. Most will be finished by this time next week. My two are already talking about what they will do immediately after exams. Ds says he is going to lie on his bed all day and do nothing

Good luck to all today, hope it goes well.

DS3 has just gone off to Physics and I warned him late last night to expect an odd paper, given what everyone is saying about Chemistry.

On the general subject of odd papers, I know for certain that DS1 had a hugely odd Chemistry paper when he sat his and was really concerned too (also a medic) but it turned out absolutely fine - when results came out no-one in his class seemed to have been affected by the oddity of it despite all the worry (and there was lots - and plenty of tears too). The low grade boundary thing whirred very effectively into action.

Figment, Monday's combo was tough and there's been a lot of talk too about Biology being foul, so your DD is in good company. Also (believe me!), even if she does slip a grade the game isn't necessarily over - does she know how she did on the ELAT (it is English isn't it?). A good score on that will help. The colleges don't over offer to any significant degree so in a sense she might be more likely to get in anyway if results don't go as planned than she would at say Durham. Cheer up Figment DD!