Coup Droit wrote:

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I'm sure you do but just a little word to celebrate your son's achievements too.

A very good friend at uni was more like your son, she was very bright and found exams easy (although was reasonably diligent too). Her two brothers were not very academic, worked but struggled.

She was never allowed to celebrate her achievements at home because her mother thought it would affect the boys, give them low self-esteem, that it wasn't appropriate for the girl to celebrate anyway as exams came easy to her, etc. etc. Whereas anything the boys achieved was feted in spades as they'd 'worked so hard' for it.
She tried not to be bitter about it but it affected her, her relationship with her parents, and her relationship with her brothers, which I'm sure would have been fine if left to the three of them to sort out.

Anyway, I'm sure it's utterly irrelevant but just to mention in passing.....

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 Thanks CD and it is a fair point. We do celebrate what he has achieved and are very proud of him. He attends Trinity College at Oxford and studies PPE. The workload to be fair is incredible, there has been a constant regime of 2 essays per week aimed at tutorials that take place on usually a Monday and Wednesday, so he is constantly working towards those with little respite. The tutorial system really puts pressure on as the tutors are real, genuine experts in their field and take no prisoners, plus the peer pressure of having a peer in the room also reviewing your work. Each term (they call the terms Trinity, Michaelmas and Hilary if I recall correctly) they start the term in what they call Week 0 with Collections, which are exams held on the Saturday or Sunday usually to test them on the previous terms work. So the end  of term holidays are usually no real respite as they are revising towards those. 

But he seems to have thrived in that situation and really working hard - he dropped the "E" (Economics) end of year 1 - too mathematical based and although he  is strong at Maths, he doesnt get any  sort of kick out of it. But he loves the more discursive Politics and Philosophy elements, in particular Philosophy (which he hadnt done  before University). He also ran as a candidate for the Yorkshire Party in our local council elections in May, got 3% of the vote, interesting side line for him and foot into politics (Yorkshire Party was also a nice choice as he  really can't stand  or form any affinity with the larger parties and party politics as a whole leaves him frustrated and disillusioned). He has been studying Middle Eastern Politics this past term and really enjoyed that. 

He currently is sitting on the cusp of a 1st / 2:1 (and at Oxford a First still means something meaningful, there has clearly been a lot of debate around  University's giving out First Class degrees too easily but Oxford - and no doubt Cambridge - still treat them as a very meaningful and sacred distinction) so has been using the summer to really work and aim at that top grade - although still quite a few 4 am  nights out, holiday with his girlfriend to Turkey etc. So he has a good social life also. 

The big eye opener for him was the other students attending Trinity. He selected it as he went on a small taster course there for state school applicants , loved Trinity and the location - it is slap bang in the centre of Oxford on Broad Street, you may have seen it on Morse or Lewis where it is often filmed, the gardens are quite famous. So he looked no further. But trinity is a small college with 400 students in total and has  a private to state ratio of something like nearly 60-40 I believe - I think it is the "worst" ratio of all the colleges, maybe bar one. Many of the other students there come from VERY privileged backgrounds - as an example he has a friend hosting a party for her 21st in a week or two in Central London, they live in this amazing listed house in Mayfair with gardens that are protected by English Heritage or the like, probably worth £15m - and that is quite normal. Many attended Westminster, St Pauls, or elite schools of that type. His girlfriend though attended a state school in Liverpool and has a similar background to us. 

He acts as the access rep for Trinity therefore to try and do something to help state schools see and apply to Trinity as a place to come - but clearly that will be a long journey.

Meanwhile he loves it, we get to visit once or twice a year to a lovely city which we enjoy visiting (although Oxford has a very real problem with homelessness and drugs  which appeared to me to be one of the cities with the biggest such issue and a council who dont seem to really be dealing with it and providing the right support and solutions to help those folks) and we are very proud to drop into conversations where he goes and what he has achieved - reflected glory and all that. My wife and I both attended Newcastle Polytechnic, a great place to study as a city but not really one of the top institutions in our land!     

PS - we do take great pleasure in reminding him that he only passed his driving test on the 3rd occasion, so lots of good banter from that. But he knows we are proud of him, we are both of them. As an aside, our most bizarre and weirdest day ever was the day he heard he had got into Oxford, the envelope dropped through the door early to mid December; my wife the same day had gone for a mammogram and they took a biopsy as they were concerned. So he found out that day. A week or two later, on his birthday (18th) we got the bad news that she  did indeed have Stage 3 Breast Cancer (although we found out it was Stage 3 after her  mastectomy when they tested the lymph nodes). A very conflicting set of emotions that month I can tell you. The good news is that after a year of surgery, chemo and radio treatment, my wife is absolutely fine and is now 3 years almost past that diagnosis and fit and well and a survivor (what a horrible phrase) as they like to call it. So he managed to achieve a lot in quite emotionally conflicting circumstances            

PPS not sure why I am sharing all this or if it seems a little self absorbed so sorry if it comes across that way - no one knows who we are in real life (I think!) so I guess it is slightly cathartic to share in a sort of anonymous way!!   

-- Edited by JonH on Friday 24th of August 2018 11:54:08 AM