Okay, here it is, my official debrief of how I think I did on the April 2014 Principals and Practice of Surveying Exam.
First, I couldn't sleep the night before. It was lights out at 10pm, and I fell asleep for a little while, and then woke with a start! Okay, here we go, I thought, as I began to get out of bed and reached for my phone to check the time (which also these days serves as my alarm clock). You can imagine my annoyance to find that it was 10:23 and what woke me up was my wife asking if I would go get a bottle for our youngest. He was stirring in the bassinette. Without trying to hide my annoyance and huffiness, I heavy footed it downstairs, made a bottle, and brought it back up. I handed it to her and said, "here", harumph.... no I didn't really harrumph out loud, but I wanted to. She then pointed to clothes she was folding, the breast pump she was holding and pumping milk, and looked at herself still in sweaty clothes from chasing three kids around all day and said, "can you... ummm, you know... like feed him?"
So, anyway, when I finally woke up at 4 AM (even though I set my alarm for 5) after only 4.5 hours of sleep, I decided that sleeping any longer just wasn't in the cards. So, I got dressed, jumped in my Jeep (which I had filled up the night before) and drove to my office. I parked my car, went inside, checked EngineerBoards, walked around the empty building, and finally figured it was time to meander over to the testing site. I work about a ten minute walk from the testing center. So, I walked over, and of course was the absolutel first person there. I waited, and watched all the other people as they began to arrive. I was carrying a calculator, my ID, and the admission ticket that I printed from NCEES. There is something nice about taking a closed book exam, as I watched all these poor souls lugging their tuff boxes, back packs, and milk crates around. I made small talk with a couple other surveyor exam candidates and got a little bit panicky when somebody mentioned a book I'd never heard of before, but they were talking about the state specific exam and I wasn't taking that one this time anyway, so I calmed down.
So, finally, I get into the exam room. We go through the rules and signing of the agreement, etc. Then we're told to start. Bam, first one I was struggling. I felt like I was going to hyperventilate, but then I just breathed, read the question again and all of a sudden it became clear to me what was being asked. I answered, then moved on. I kept doing that until I got to the last question. There were a few that I flat out guessed on, I'm not gonna lie, but here's how I classified each question by the time it was all over.
Group A: Nailed it. 100% probability of correctness
Group B: Feel pretty good about it. 75% probability of correctness
Group C: Narrowed them down to two possible solutions. 50% probability of correctness
Group D: Fuck it, no clue. 25% probability of correctness
In the end, I think I probably had about 30% in the Group A range, 35% in the Group B range, maybe 20% in the Group C range, and 15% in the Group D range. So based on that, then I'm thinking that my score should be (30*1)+(35*.75)+(20*.5)+(15*.25)=70 which is a pass. Of course, this is all just a guess. But, this is what gives me hope, because I'm being honest with my assessment here.
The other thing that gives me hope is that there were 8 people taking the PS exam in total. At least two of them were taking it again, having failed in Oct 13, and then there is the guy who didn't come back after lunch. So, because the chances of passing on the first try are 76%, then that means that statistically, 2 people from my group would fail. Well, one of them is the guy who didn't show up after lunch and then the two people who wre retaking the exam statistically only have about a 25% chance of passing it, so one of them is sure to fail, which means I'm in the group that statistically should pass!!!
Anyway, it's all conjecture till I get the results.
