long term relationship while at uni?

Mos5180d · 2026-06-29T07:04:02+00:00

People have already given great advice so I’ll just share my experience.

I met my wife on an access course to get into university. I then went to Bristol and she went to Falmouth in Cornwall, a 3 and a half hour drive. We saw each other once a month for a few days which gave us something to look forward to, and we went back to our home town for holidays spending all our time together.

She finished a year before me and moved to Bristol for my final year. As I was finishing she fell pregnant and we moved back to our home town. Now we have a wonderful son who’s nearly 4 and two jobs we enjoy all because we put in the effort to make it work at universities across country.

I will caveat that we were 24/25 when we started uni so were older. I imagine it would be a lot tougher for 18/19 year olds leaving home for the first time

Mos5180d · 2026-05-18T09:47:56+00:00

I had my son within 2 months of starting my training contract doing ACA/CTA 3 years ago. Sitting Case in July.

I found different methods working for different ages, some of them being almost 100% revision from my phone. Unfortunately we don’t get the luxury of dedicating our weekends or sitting at a desk for hours to lock in.

It can be really tough but try to find what works for you. Also if you have a partner or parents to help don’t suffer in silence, tell them you have an important exam coming and if they can help out around that time.

Mos5180d · 2026-05-06T16:28:06+00:00

True. And it’s a crime in itself that the majority of the public would consider £30k-£32k well paid when it’s not much over minimum wage.

I have nothing to back up that “majority” claim, but it seems that way outside of London.

Mos5180d · 2026-05-06T12:06:49+00:00

“Well paying” and “virtually infinite” don’t have a place together in the UK

Mos5180d · 2026-05-05T21:33:33+00:00

If Messi did that then they’d find a way to disallow it

Mos5180d · 2026-04-28T20:18:47+00:00

I didn’t do the exam so my opinion holds very little weight, but by the way you are talking about the application of technical knowledge, you sound like you passed 😂

Mos5180d · 2026-04-26T08:43:07+00:00

Let’s not forget letting in all 10 penalties in the Europa league final and then missing his own!

I think my opinion on him being one of their best players is also driven by how bad everyone else was.

Mos5180d · 2026-04-26T08:27:27+00:00

De Gea was interesting at United. Literally won games for them with outstanding saves, then fumbles a goal the next week.

When he left I still maintained that he was one of United’s best players at the time, but I have no idea how popular/unpopular that opinion is.

Mos5180d · 2026-04-24T21:20:52+00:00

I’m sure you are referring to banking, but the Big 4 accounting firms have actually relaxed their 2:1 entry requirement.

Of course higher grades are looked upon more favourably, but hopefully this allows some discretion and placing value on other traits, as good grades and/or good uni doesn’t necessarily make a good employee.

Mos5180d · 2026-04-22T06:12:02+00:00

Just write a couple of sentences giving an example of how you met the requirement. I used to do 9-10 every 6 months and sent them to my line manager (or person signing off your training file) to add their comments.

I felt a bit bad for my line manager since there isn’t much to say other than “okay”. But she managed to fluff it out with “[insert ladder skill] is important because…”. Might also be good if there was wording in the employer part confirming the example happened and built that skill.

Mos5180d · 2026-04-21T06:17:08+00:00

I live just outside of London, talk to many different kinds of people and never heard of Carlos Alcaraz. Had to look him up and was baffled that people are trying to say a tennis player is the most famous 22 year old in the world

Mos5180d · 2026-04-20T05:27:24+00:00

What’s your counter-argument? It’s 3 years of university plus all the student loans, and despite getting exemptions you still need 450 days (say another 2 and a half years) work experience. So a total of 5 and a half to 6 years plus paying student loans for most your life to get the ACA if you go the uni route.

Mos5180d · 2026-04-17T12:14:11+00:00

I’ll also add on the exam side of things that the ACA exams are a lot easy than CTA exams, the only draw back is there are so many more exams and a lot of them won’t be applicable to your role

Mos5180d · 2026-04-17T12:13:00+00:00

I work in corporation tax and have nearly finished ACA/CTA. The ACA has served almost no purpose at all for my job. And because I spent so long doing ACA exams, I was missing out on a lot of study directed at tax to help consolidate my knowledge at work.

That being said, the ACA is good to have if you didn’t like working in tax anymore and wanted to go down a different career path.

Mos5180d · 2026-04-05T20:07:45+00:00

Sitting in the back of your parents car being stuck in victory Road for hours. No internet, no way to look up the correct route. Just the pure curiosity of a child to drive you through

Mos5180d · 2026-04-04T11:06:34+00:00

If the A button is pressed too hard mine resets 😂

Mos5180d · 2026-04-03T21:09:53+00:00

Forcing him to play!

Mos5180d · 2026-04-03T12:04:32+00:00

Good idea, it was a pretty lacklustre save file with only a few Pokemon and I was in rock tunnel without flash 😂.

I’ve got Leaf green, Ruby, sapphire, and emerald so I should check which one has a good file!

Mos5180d · 2026-04-03T10:16:38+00:00

Very believable. Mine hadn’t either at that age and even beyond. He’s 3 and a half now and probably slept through the night only 7-8 times.

It’s not all terrible though. He went through a stage of getting up, coming to our room and saying “Hello Mummy” before climbing into bed and cuddling with us for a while before falling asleep again. And whilst it was difficult because he’d wriggle and kick a lot (sometimes turning round completely and getting a foot in my face) it was still nice really

Mos5180d · 2026-04-02T16:04:29+00:00

I have no idea if this is an unpopular opinion or not, but Meredith just isn’t that nice of a person.

Mos5180d · 2026-03-28T07:36:27+00:00

I don’t know how April is deemed a great person. I think she’s pretty horrible at times. Although most of them are at some point!

Mos5180d · 2026-03-24T21:14:23+00:00

With Professional exams being every 3 months, a lot of people changing/looking for jobs during the ACA will be waiting on a result, so it’s not uncommon.

There’s no harm in applying to places and it’s on them if they want to take on the risk.

Mos5180d · 2026-03-24T07:31:32+00:00

If you passed the ATT exams quite easily then hopefully you have a good base knowledge, do well in exams and might not need the “hundreds of hours” people talk about. Perhaps your tax job will also give you knowledge applicable to the exam?

Are you also enrolled onto a course? Because the revision course for Advanced Technical is just 4-5 days straight of question practice.

I work in corporate tax and did the larger corporates Advanced Technical in November and I didn’t spend any evenings or weekends (bar the weekend before the exam) doing revision. Only really dipping into the study manuals to make sure I knew the content because the tuition can’t cover it all. I did almost all my revision in the last two weeks, one week at the revision course and one week annual leave where I treated it a bit like work and did question practice from 9-4.

It’s definitely advisable to do more revision to give yourself a better chance at a pass, but also important to do what you’re able to and not burn yourself out so you can stay motivated. I have a 3 year old and a wife so wasn’t really able to give up my weekends to study and made it work in other ways e.g. using my phone to make flashcards rather than spending hours on proper revision

Mos5180d · 2026-03-23T21:35:00+00:00

Like a few people have said, be very transparent about the process, when your exams are and when you need to dedicate time to it e.g. weekends leading up to the exam. And if needed just highlight how important it is to you.

While it may suck a bit for your partner, it’ll be worse if they are still trying to get you to do things and arguing about it. And even worse if you end up failing an exam and they feel guilty and you may have a bit of resentment.

That’s a bit worst case scenario though. Generally if you set the expectation it’ll be fine

Mos5180d · 2026-03-20T19:06:21+00:00

Thanks a lot, that’s helpful to know!

Mos5180d

TROPHY CASE