Finishing year 13 in 2017

[HSMMaCM]

Hi all. Keep in touch with uni offers, new jobs, gap years, exams, etc. We can get through his

Best wishes to everyone.

Teta, we know two kids who failed CE. Both were absolutely fine. One is now at what is arguably America's most selective University. The other found, with the help of his prep, a place at somewhere slightly gentler, and within a week of starting, both boy and mother were delighted with the outcome. They had not realised how much pressure the boy had been under trying to stay in the London top Prep to top secondary process.

It must be a massive shock but I hope you find a good solution.

DD left to work in an American summer camp yesterday. She was both nervous and excited. She will have very limited access to wifi, and use of social media is barred. It was so nice when she was working in a ski resort to see friends' photos tagging her. She says she will write letters. No alcohol either...

Its still lovely to have a summer without exams. Her DB had finals but essentially got the grades he needed in his second year, so was able to calmly get on with them. She will pretty much go straight to University when she returns, so effectively the empty nest starts now.

I just got a message with 3 sad faces after the psychology exam. The snickers for breakfast clearly didn't help then.

Need more sleep. How exciting about the summer camp (even if you will miss her) and the general calm in your house.

NMS, the no alcohol sounfs good! Calm in the house also sounfs very good.

DD is not replying to my texts - should have come out of the Psychology exam by now

Was it AQA HSM? DD said it was hard

Yes AQA.

She always has to do something completely different after an exam, so I checked her plans. She's going somewhere I've never heard of, to do something I didn't understand blah blah blah Snapchat with someone I know. I didn't ask for more details, just said have a nice time.

Dd found maths hard and didn't finish it which is very unlike her. Luckily she can drop to Cs and still get an A due to AS mark last year but an A* may be out the question! Luckily Psychology went much better

dd was ok with the two Further Maths exams (OCR).

Physics tomorrow.

Yes, the fire really does put everything into perspective. So many people still unaccounted for.

Good luck to anyone doing Physics or English tomorrow. DS is feeling gloomy again. He says the only thing he can do to keep his mind off how badly he has messed up in the two exams he's taken so far is to keep working. I keep telling him to take a break but it is falling on deaf ears.

Ds has had Chemistry and 2 Maths/Further Maths so far this week. He is happy with how they have gone.
Physics tomorrow and this is the subject that he is least confident with. He has done plenty of revision though so fingers crossed.

Psychology wasn't quite the disaster communicated earlier. One section went quite well. Another had good and bad bits. Research methods were terrible - but we were expecting that- although she thought it was 1/3 of the marks for paper 2 and has now been told it's 1/2 the marks.

Her most pressing problem tonight seems to be how to get the sticky bits left by the monitor plasters off. I've suggested nail varnish remover.

Good luck to everyone with those really tricky sounding exams for the rest of the week.

Eucalyptus oil HSM (works for my HRT patch adhesive)!

Mine has physics tomorrow too, then maths M2 on friday.

Thanks Ono. I'll get her some tomorrow if it's still there.

DS was properly nervous going out this morning - he actually threw up!

Poor ds!

My dd barely spoke to me this morning. It's probably a sign of nerves. I took the hint and stayed out of her way.

Interesting about the mistake of not giving the formula for SD in Biology paper. DD was pleased that, having done Maths AS last year, she was able to remember it.
Sounds like they will be generous anyway - let's hope for some low grade boundaries as I'm sure it will have been unsettling for many.

DD only has two Biology papers left, one next week and one the week after, so nicely spaced now. And a couple of general studies thrown in too, but not too stressed about those. I hope she can do her Biology justice and finish on a high, then we just have to keep our fingers crossed that Geography worked out OK overall, in spite of her long answer not going as well as it could have done.

In other news I just found out I passed my Counselling course - the first year of training towards becoming a counsellor. Early days yet though!

Well done! Glad your DD wasn't fazed by the SD thing. I pity the markers sorting out the mess - they have to be fair both on the kids who couldn't attempt the question but also on those who did and therefore had less time for the rest. Presumably if someone had a go but misremembered the formula, the markers have to work through the maths and give them credit anyway?

Oh dear, Ono, your poor ds!
Needmoresleep thank you for your reassuring words.Ds will be fine, we have always had a second choice as it was a 50/50 chance of him getting in.He was a undiagnosed dyslexic at 11 and couldn't string sentences together when he left his state primary.He has been in a class of 7 and has had lots of attention and input which will hopefully stand him in good stead for the future.
Dd has now decided Chemistry was ok but why does she always come out saying it was hard and it went dreadfully?I've asked her this and she says it's because they're hard and she doesn't know the answers to everything and they're not GCSE where you literally know everything beforehand.The only thing is my nerves cannot take any more desperate phone calls .

Teta - my observation over the years is that sometimes very able people are most likely to come out of exams full of doom and gloom, simply because they know their deficiencies. During my uni finals, one guy was a total pain like this - remembering details he'd omitted, points he might have answered better. He was predicting himself a 2:2, on which basis just about everyone else would have failed. I pointed out to him that some people would have actually got things wrong - this came as a revelation to him. Anyhow, he apparently got the best marks for 25 years and people who estimated they were 2 grades below him got firsts. Reader, I married him and fortunately our DD seems much better at assessing exams realistically - for which I'm extremely grateful!

Aww Errol what a lovely story, first thing that's made me smile all week

I agree that the reason DS feels despondent and therefore nervous is that he is all too aware of how well he could have done. As I said to him when I did my A levels I knew so little that I wasn't aware of what I'd got wrong so I thought I'd done well.

I am with you teta on the desperate phonecalls, I think I am suffering from Rescue Remedy overdose!

AQA Physics - not the best exam & no time to check answers. Oh well.

Onwards and hopefully upwards.

Not sure which board my DD had for physics ... she said there were some hard questions but it was fair and she didn't detect any exam board cockups.

My dd also said physics was hard and she didn't do as well as she would have liked.

Her usual thing is to come out of the exam feeling ok about it, then talk to her friends about their answers and feel worse.

She is dreading next week, it's her busiest with 4 exams.