Sunday, July 27, 2008

Oops - I Did It Again!

My husband was right, and I have to go and get him a crispy $50 bill...

I did it, despite myself. I got my PASS letter yesterday for BT. Woo Hoo! I am so relieved that I don't have to revisit this one. Actually, I'm relieved that I don't have to re-take any of them so far. So now I can say I'm 4/9th an Architect. It's a lovely little fraction. So the count now is 4 passed, 5 taken, 4 to go. I took SP this past Friday, and will know my fate in about four weeks (seems to be the graphics division turn-around time in NY).

One think I can say with certainty about studying for the graphics divisions is that Dorf and the ARE Forum are MUSTS. You have to practice practice practice, post your vignettes on the Forum, and treat Dorf's "Solutions" as gospel. There is absolutely no way I could have passed this using the Kaplan materials. Quite frankly, they are useless... at least for me.

If you don't know about the late Prof. Dorf's material, go the website: http://www.nalsa.com

On to BP!

Friday, July 11, 2008

The First Loooooong Wait

BT aka Six Hours of Agony (sorry to those who have heard this saga ad nauseum). Why do we have to wait 8 weeks for graphics results, when MC sections only take 2 weeks? Don't get me started...

Actually, it wasn't as horrific as I thought (as usual). At one point, I even dared to think I was enjoying it. Of course, that feeling didn't last long...

I think I did okay on the section and stairs. I will probably get dinged for the ramp (one too many landings), mechanical/lights because I overlit a couple of rooms (but the two were an art exhibit room and a studio), structure (too many columns), and the roof (screwed up the high roof). I met all the criteria, and made sure my clearances were correct, so who knows?

I saved the structural for last on the first half, and by the time I got there I just blanked. Then I went back and notice my ramp didn't work because of the clearances... So I redrew that. On the second half, mechanical was okay and stair was okay (had a big, long landing on the upper floor) but feel that these could pass. I had an hour and some to do the roof - and just wigged out. In retrospect, it was a very simple solution. For whatever reason, I thought that one edge of the upper roof had to be at 9'-6" like the lower roof! Wow, talk about a complicated upper roof! I made it work, but will get slammed for that I'm sure because it didn't exactly follow the program. It met all the criteria, but just stupid stupid stupid...

I don't know what all the fatal errors are, but hopefully none of my mistakes were that bad and I will pass. I doubt it, though (what else is new).

On to SP and the joys of grading!