FAILURE!

Well I have taken three of the 7 ARE Exams and have passed 2 and just found out last week that I Failed my last exam (Site Planning and Design). It sucks to get a letter that says FAIL on it and you wonder what you could have done different, did you study enough, did you practice the vignette enough and many other thoughts and worries; but, it is not the end of the world and it is definitely not the end of your ambition to become an architect. It is only a design challenge to overcome, what is needed in order not to fail it again, I am not sure that you gain anything by dwelling on the issue just keep on going.

Maybe it would not be so bad if they would stop using the word "FAIL" in bold oversize font in the middle of the page and come up with something better like "Not so good" or "Oops, try again" or something like that it may be a little easier to take. I think I will white out the "FAIL" in my letter and fill it in with "Do Over" so that I feel a little better about it. Well, anyway I have two of the exams done and only have 5 more to go, and I will keep going until they are done.

One of the people in our study group emailed me back when I informed them that I failed and she said that if I got a fail letter she was for sure going to get the letter that said "ha, what you think you can become an architect?" and that made me laugh, but I bet she will pass and I will be very glad for her but either way we will get through this and we will be called ARCHITECTS soon. Almost as soon as I read the fail on my letter I went on line and scheduled my next exam, I am not going to let this get me down and I will keep going with he rest of the exams and when I am eligible to take Site Planning and Design again I will, and I will pass it this time (I hope!).

Time to study some more, and I will make it through this.

Structural Woes...

Do you know how to find the reactions of a beam? Do you know how to draw a shear diagram? Do you know how to size a steel beam? Do you know how much load reinforced concrete is capable of?

DPS is hosting another series of structural seminars to answer these questions and many more. Our first of this series will take place on Thursday, March 12, 2009 and will be presented by Francis and Eileen from our very own structural group, will attempt to demystify the magic that they do in making the buildings we design do what they need to do to stand and protect the occupants. They are gearing their seminars on the ARE 4.0 study material and have met with several interns and newly licensed architects about what is useful and what is fluff, so they have some idea of what may appear on the exam. For this session they will be covering Statics, Beams and Columns, Wood Construction, Steel Construction and Reinforced Concrete Construction.

If you have any questions or comments please respond to this post with them and we will see that they get the info. Also we can discuss how we are all working to prepare for this exam and for others, lets discuss and comment, and we will see you on the 12th for some very interesting structural stuff.