Fall 2019 EET Class

Hey all,

One of my only gripes with EET is they don't have any kind of forum for folks in their class to talk with each other in.  If anyone was in the last EET class wants to discuss their preparation please post here.  Generally speaking I feel pretty good about how they prepared us.  I'm a bit disappointed in the concrete prep but that's a personal shortcoming of mine as concrete tends to be my weakest subject, more so than a class issue. 

I felt like the analysis topics were pretty on point and masonry and wood as well.  The bridge prep was nicely done although I must say the lateral bridge prep seemed better for me than the vert.

Steel I can't comment bc I didn't need the steel prep really.  The concrete prep I felt was solid, particularly the vertical, as I literally had a plan or example to handle almost any scenario we got except for the problem we actually got in the vert afternoon lol.  And the example we had that most closely resembled it wasn't really adaptable.  

I'm curious if anyone felt the same way? At any rate I really hope you all did well and we won't have to go through this exercise again although statistically given about 30 people in each section , minus the folks who were in both, it's possible 15-20 of us will see each other again in class. Which I hope isn't the case.  

I thought the EET course was good. I personally took vertical. I liked the mini quizzes and the small mistakes it made me identify. The practice exam I thought was good prep too. Only gripe is that they would have errors in the binder that were there even from last test session (evident by the old videos calling out the same errors).

Feel same about the afternoon concrete question. I may have missed a few checks for that. 

ugh that afternoon question is the only thing i'm worried about. aside from generally not having enough time in the morning. I love the EET resource, and am glad I found it. I had a lot of stuff happen in life that didn't let me prepare as much as I wanted, but hopefully I can move on to lateral for next cycle. bleh. 

The binder is phenomenal.....it has become my go to resource @work.

I was in the vertical EET class, but I was taking it in anticipation of taking both exams in April.  I'll take the lateral class next during the winter session.  So with that being said, it is a bit difficult for me to say how well prepared it got me as I have not experienced the exam.   Though, I will say that I do not believe I am totally ready at this moment for the vertical exam with the class alone.  Currently, I am going through PPI material independently before I move onto my lateral studies.  With any refresher class, it is probably a must to put in a lot of hours outside the "classroom" to totally get ready.

Dr. Ibarhim always said they test fundementals and that's how the afternoon did feel.  I brought many obscure examples that I didn't come close to needing.  That said the multiple choice in my mind regarding Bridges had us going much deeper into the code than the class did which was a bit irratating.  The questions were all doable it was just not having experience with every aspect of AASHTO that jammed me up on a couple.  Wish I had a few more mins to get my bearings straight you know? 

Yea, I'm a bit afraid of what might be on the exam for AASHTO.  Being a buildings guy, it's a big weakness for me.  Those mini exams were my worst ones.

Which reminds me...  I guess I do have a not-so-important criticism of the class/mini exams.  I'm not a fan that the solutions expire and I'm not even totally sure why they expire.  As I said, I take the exam in April, so I always intended to have those available up til exam time for my studying.  Good thing we were warned about it so I could print them out.  Not the end of the world to do that, but I'm not sure why make me go through that hassle.

I think it's so people don't reproduce the materials. But yes, it's frustrating. Especially since my computers all default-open in bluebeam, so it takes me 2x as long to open each file. lol. 

organix said:

I'm not a fan that the solutions expire and I'm not even totally sure why they expire.

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If you turn the windows explorer file preview pane on, you might still be able to see the solutions. My solutions expired a few months back and I just checked it on my work PC... I can still preview the solutions through the bluebeam file preview window. Granted, you can't open the file itself or print it, but you might be able to take a "peek" through this workaround. 

BuzzKillington said:

If you turn the windows explorer file preview pane on, you might still be able to see the solutions. My solutions expired a few months back and I just checked it on my work PC... I can still preview the solutions through the bluebeam file preview window. Granted, you can't open the file itself or print it, but you might be able to take a "peek" through this workaround. 

Click to expand...

weird. mine doesn't work. it gives me a warning that the page expired, and a black screen in the preview window. 

organix said:

Yea, I'm a bit afraid of what might be on the exam for AASHTO.  Being a buildings guy, it's a big weakness for me.  Those mini exams were my worst ones.

Which reminds me...  I guess I do have a not-so-important criticism of the class/mini exams.  I'm not a fan that the solutions expire and I'm not even totally sure why they expire.  As I said, I take the exam in April, so I always intended to have those available up til exam time for my studying.  Good thing we were warned about it so I could print them out.  Not the end of the world to do that, but I'm not sure why make me go through that hassle.

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Print'em into PDFs.

Thats what I did Stewie.

Stewie said:

Print'em into PDFs.

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BuzzKillington said:

If you turn the windows explorer file preview pane on, you might still be able to see the solutions. My solutions expired a few months back and I just checked it on my work PC... I can still preview the solutions through the bluebeam file preview window. Granted, you can't open the file itself or print it, but you might be able to take a "peek" through this workaround. 

Click to expand...

Yea, there are workarounds.  The complaint isn't really that I was left without options.  Since I knew they'd expire, I had already printed them to be safe.  The thing is that it creates an inconvenience to the user.  If the goal was to stop people from sharing/reproducing, it's not really effective as anyone could easily do that with or without the time expiration.

Btw, print to pdf actually didn't work for me through Adobe.  The security on the files didn't allow it and I couldn't remove it without a password.  I'd be curious to see how you did it Titleistguy to see if I can do it.  It'll save me the effort of scanning.

I only needed to do it a few times so depending on the particular file maybe it wasn't protected the same way but I didn't have a problem with it.  Although the files weren't the exams or minis it was all the extra handouts and whatever they had in the folders bc there was so much I'd download them all, bind to one pdf and print.