I was out of the country when I received the email about my SPD fail report. I was devastated. I cried, even though the result didn’t surprise me. I knew that failing would make me feel pretty terrible. It was a reminder of why I was so scared of this process to begin with. The only comfort I found was on a silly assumption I made up in my head about the result. I went on NCARB’s website and watched a video or two about the score report and what the description of levels mean. They seemed so vague that I couldn’t help to think that my level 3 on site grading was the single cause of my fail. Even with a couple of level 2s, had I nailed that vignette, could it have lifted me out of that fail? I’m really not sure how that works. But it also didn’t really matter. What mattered was the fact that it allowed me to lift myself up, brush off the arrogance (I believe I called it cockiness earlier), and move on. Upon returning from Brazil, I scheduled BDCS for four weeks later. I was still a bit naive to realize that it was a bold and ambitious schedule.
For this exam, I used Kaplan, Archiflash, Jenny’s notes, alkikat’s notes, Gang Chen’s mock exam, and Ching’s Building Construction Illustrated (BCI). Until this point, I had not purchased one book, only Gang Chen’s mock up exams… Most notes I had were saved on my computer many years earlier, with the exception of Jenny’s notes, which I could download for free (Thanks Jenny!). As usual, and while Ching’s BCI was being shipped, I started with Kaplan. That took me one week. The following week, I went through BCI. This was super helpful. I actually thought I had discovered the gold mine of study material. I saw so many questions on SPD that could have come from this book… Can you see how naive I was being? This was the first time I was venturing away from a study guide and going straight into the source. If only it was the right source. Why I picked BCI, I’m not sure (I must have thought it would be helpful for structural systems as well). Regardless of my choice (I should have gone with Fundamentals of Building Design), I felt much better about my new study material. One has to remember, I did not go to architecture school in the U.S., so I was not familiar with other books or material one could’ve attained during college that would be useful when preparing for the ARE. I thought I was making the right investment by purchasing the Kaplan Study Guides. And I thought that would suffice. Gosh, was I wrong!
On the third week, I practiced sample tests by taking and re-taking them until I learned all I was getting wrong, as well as I started practicing for the vignettes. I made sure not to leave those for last minute again. The problem is: those three vignettes are tricky! And tiring! And time consuming. It is hard to prepare for all of those at one time. So I basically practiced one vignette per day. By day, I mean, night. By the end of that week, I had practiced each vignette a couple of times. On the fourth week, and the same week as the exam, I reviewed all the notes and gave each vignette one more try. I didn’t have time to go over the sample tests to gauge my knowledge. I got sidetracked with a little business venture my husband an I were getting into on that last week: the purchase of a rental property. That was a bit of a distracter, so much so, that I missed the day that allowed me to postpone that exam. Even though I wanted to feel more prepared, I certainly felt like I could give this exam a good try.
I made sure to schedule this exam on a morning. The idea of starting this long exam on an afternoon and running a risk of walking in feeling tired again was not appealing. I walked into the test center feeling nervous, as usual, but ready to take on this beast. To maintain tradition, NCARB threw me for a loop again with the first ten questions. But after letting my heart settle, I didn’t have mini panic attacks like I was having on the past three exams. I still marked a bunch of questions though. That was normal for me. My thought was always to make sure I made the best possible educated guest in the event that I didn’t have time to come back to those questions. In fact, I rarely had any time left to review more than 10-15 questions. I like to think that this is the norm for those of us who take this exam in a second language. They are extra hard, I think. There are always a couple of questions with vocabulary that were completely new to me. I remember thinking: “Where is this coming from? With all that I read and prepared for, how could I have not come across this term before?” It never failed. And the funny part is that I have never been able to look them up because I was never able to remember what they were. In fact, I could never remember anything specific about the exam. I could actually remember 2 or 3 questions, 3 or 4 days later. Sometimes I would remember a fourth or fifth questions out of the blue, in the middle of the night, 5 days later. But I was usually too exhausted to get up and look it up…
So I finished the multiple choice with little time to review, and although uncertain about the outcome, I had a sense that I didn’t flunk it either. I went into the vignettes feeling ready to take back my self-esteem and brush the last exam off as a total fluke.
I started by tackling the stair vignette, then the ramp, then the roof. I finished all of them with enough time to review and make adjustments. That was the problem. I went back to the ramp design and decided to make it more economical, by narrowing it. I initially had a 60″ wide ramp, keeping it consistent on the landing. I changed the width to 48″. I can’t remember how it impacted the landing, or if it did impact it at all, but I do remember I ended up with a ramp for less that 4″ drop. I remember thinking that was not the best option. And I also remember thinking that I didn’t have time to adjust it (it would mean reworking the entire ramp). So I decided my solutions were good enough and exited the program.
As described above, two days later, I remember missing to add flashing on the clerestory wall in the roof vignette. Oh no! Another part of the solution I was not proud of. Suddenly, I had a bad feeling about the result of this exam. Sure enough, when the email came about the result being posted, I failed it. I didn’t think I bomb it. Just failed it. Good grief. This is no fun.
I had a level 2 on two content areas and two vignettes: the ramp and the roof. Darn. I kind of expected that from the vignettes, but not from the multiple choice. Although I felt a bit surprised with the result, I also remembered not feeling fully confident going in. I had a lot going on at the time with a new investment property we needed to renovate before putting it out on the market. This little distraction played a major role on my next fail: SS.
archipath 