When I was kid, I was challenged by an organization, and I wound up in a judicial law library to save on legal fees for three years establishing probable cause documents and put them in 3 bankers box. It was probably the loveliest days of my life, LOL!
Whether you make an appeal or not, I hope you do well on the exam
@FutureSE. GOOD LUCK!
More BlessingS!
I think you are reading too far into my idea of litigation. I'm not really concerned with them bearing the counsel fees either. Hardly any of this is legal, it's just a story (I like talking) but a brief synopsis of the situation is as follows:
I started this journey nearly (2) years ago after being rejected by the GA board for PE reciprocity as I only had the PE under my belt and I waited a long time to get it. It was probably a stupid idea and I should've taken it way earlier, but I never really needed the licensure so it was approximately 2013 or 2014 when I got it. Anyway, I bought the NCEES practice exam, studied, and took the vertical and lateral SE exams the same weekend. I left the vertical feeling like I crushed it and the NCEES practice exam was fairly representative of the content of that exam. Little did I know the next day would have a tremendous amount of material I had literally never been exposed to. I left the lateral with a long face, knowing I had clearly failed. I couldn't even feel good about the vertical anymore as this was the first exam in my life that I'd failed and it was a huge blow to my confidence. It was almost like a high school sweetheart breakup. I just knew life was over and I was never going to recover from this devastation. I was a decent undergrad with an upper 3's gpa and a straight A graduate student so I eventually attributed my failing to just not being exposed to the material, picked up my suck it up straw, and tried to move on with my life.
At this point, I contacted every SE that I knew. I was trying to get in touch with someone that had been exposed to the material so they could at least point me in the proper direction for my studies as I didn't even know which books to use for high seismic (my ignorance had been bliss to this point and I've never designed anything further west than Iowa). Even in South Carolina and Tennessee, I've never been lucky enough to see an SDC greater than C. I knew there was some funky stuff the west coast seismic voodoo engineers did but LITERALLY NOT ONE SINGLE INDIVIDUAL I SPOKE WITH KNEW WHAT THE HELL I WAS TALKING ABOUT (I not talking PE's, I'm talking licensed SE's, I guess pre 2011 it was dramatically different). A few of these individuals were graders for previous administrations! Other old SE's accused me of drinking when I proclaimed dynamic seismic analysis was on the exam in limited quantities. The resounding words from the industry were "You're wasting your time studying anything but ELFP." I searched for recent grads to try and learn this stuff. Turns out they aren't teaching it in most colleges (I did find out later that at least GA Tech has a seismic course now). I like self study, but if you have no idea where to start or what to study it's not so good. So I googled some books, bought them, and started reading this board and talking smack. I self studied hard. Dug into the seismic sections of the code like a tick buried in a dog's ear. Went to the exam feeling confident again. Then I didn't finish. Really didn't finish. To the point, I almost needed twice as much time to finish. At least when I got the grades back, most of the questions I did finish, I received decent marks for.
On a side note, after the second try, one of the exam proctors told me to apply for special accommodations. They said it was easy to get and they would allow time and a half or even double time. I thought I would try this out after finding out how badly I had failed for trial # (2). I applied and I don't know if I was randomly audited or if the proctor was just looking at me and thought I was ******** (I don't blame her, I blame genetics). Anyway, I received a letter requesting significant substantiating evidence for reasons of special accommodation to include: letters from doctors, letters from coworkers, and pictures of my work environment. At this point, I seriously considered buying and wearing a football helmet, sitting at my desk, and drooling profusely while my business partners took photo's of me pretending to eat my calculator. I decided against these actions and decided to take School of PE instead as I knew at this point I had a snowball's chance in hell of passing this thing without help.
School of PE cleared a lot of things up for me. I was regaining my confidence in my abilities, following their class schedule, reading the code books like a boss. I felt like I was finally taming this wild beast know as the Lateral SE Exam! I go in for trial #3, I do decent in the morning (passing level best I can tell from internet message boards). The afternoon was a little difficult and time consuming as I finished writing within the (1) minute warning period. Walking away from the exam, I was moderately sure I had passed. On the drive home I realized a few MINOR issues I had with the wood and general analysis problems concerning adjustment factors and the wonderful Omega value. "Surely the graders would see that I mostly knew what I was doing and would give me partial marks at the worst," I told myself. When I received the results, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I passed the steel and concrete portions yet failed wood and general analysis (Oddly, this was a flip flop from the previous administration for me).
Receiving this result left me bitter as hell. I was furious. I still am. I should not have been required to take this thing again. I'm sure of that. I looked up challenging the grading of the afternoon, but NCEES doesn't allow that. I called and e-mailed NCEES offered to pay a proctor and their counsel, drive to South Carolina, donate to the charity of their choice, and perform mission work in the name of NCEES just to allow me to view the graded exam to see what I had done wrong. At this point, I would have donated a kidney, maybe even both of them to be able to see what I did that was so wrong to fail me. Everything I offered seemed more that reasonable and accommodating to me. After all, I'd seen the exam once and I was apparently assumed too stupid to reproduce it from memory. I was alos as considerate and accommodating as a butthurt individual can be, but I was told "Under no circumstances can you see your exam." I don't know who graded that exam, but they definitely went to the same brain surgeon that Hank Johnson did (see my previous post for an explaination). While, I knew I made some minor mistakes, there were absolutely no legitimate reasons to fail me on those two problems.
Eventually, I tried to get over my anger. I used engineer boards as my personal psychologist. I decided I was going to give this thing one more good shot at 1000% (Yes, 10X the capacity of a normal human being). I signed up for EET as individuals on here stated they were exceptional (they really are). I went to the Dr. and got a prescription for adderall. I studied seismic like a teenage boy staring at a dirty magazine. I was absolutely like Rocky Balboa training in the Siberian wilderness to fight Drago.
During these intense studies, I realized that whomever graded the last exam either really did screw me over or NCEES grades so harshly that basically perfection is the only acceptable option. My standing theory is that NCEES hands over a key to the "subject matter experts" and they just compare it to your exam. If these so called "experts" don't know what they are doing and you don't match the key almost exactly, they mark it wrong and move on. If you are lucky enough to get two of these morons grading your exam (I think it's likely the second grader never really looks at it or just thumbs through it speedily), then congrats, you've likely failed. This gave me more fuel to punch NCEES right in the ding ding on the next exam. Finally, I sat for this last administration of the exam and left feeling like I smashed it like Hulk smashed Loki. I have (3) problems I likely missed in the morning and a small portion of one of the sections on (1) of the afternoon problems. Everything else, I'm fairly sure of. According to grading statistics online, I would have to miss 1 out of every (4) questions I thought I got right to fail this exam. Assuming that is the case, I have a HUGE buffer for passing.
So to sum it all up, Yes, if I get the grading back and I somehow didn't pass. I will absolutely go Hiroshima on that *** to see the exam. I will not take NO for an answer and the easiest option they will have is to just allow me to see the damn thing. I will pay for their time, the lawyer, the travel, the proctor, and an armed guard if need be, but I will see it. I am a practical and reasonable individual. If I legitimately failed, I'll learn from whatever I did wrong and move on, but I can't and absolutely won't sit here and just let them give me a "Sorry, try again" without me knowing EXACTLY why.