Two things to know for both Programming, Planning and Practice and Site Planning and Design exams:
The first two questions, I didn’t know the answers and they confused me. They seemed perfectly relevant to the exam, I just didn’t know the answer. [I did remember other questions to which I didn't know the answers.] The third question, I knew and I relaxed.
All of the exam questions were relevant to site planning. I came across a junior high school science diagram and a methods and materials question. They pertained to climate and foundations respectively, both relevant to site planning. It took me all of an hour and 30 minutes to answer 65 questions. I had less than 7 minutes to review at the end. I used it to review about 7 questions, I had marked.
Someone warned me about getting a lot of calculation questions. I didn’t see any until the 40-somethingth question. Then I got maybe 5 or 7 questions that needed calculating. (Not in a row. At least two were fill-in the blank questions.) The 6th calculation question took me a long time. I knew that because when I looked up I had 17 questions left with 16 minutes remaining. I told myself any more questions to calculate will be skipped. Well the 2nd one I came across required calculating, but I skipped it and it was the only one I had to come back to calculate.
I felt good leaving, but as always there were questions to which I didn’t know the answer. When I got home, I looked up a couple of answers to see if I got them right. From what I can tell, I got them correct. Yeah! 
I think my site grading was a pass. I started it and, 5 minutes in, scratched the entire thing with the start over button. I didn’t like what I saw. The next time I rotated the pad and still didn’t really like what I saw. I did feel that the contour that created the level pad may have created ponding at the upper side of the slope. This concerned me, but my understanding is this is passing. During the exam, I thought surely this will be a downgrade, but I did think it would pass. Anyways I felt I needed to be done to concentrate on the Site Design vignette.
I was concerned about completing the Site Design vignette. I had felt I didn’t practice enough prior and I would need as much time as possible. Even though I “finished” with some 10 or 12 minutes remaining on the clock, I needed that time to go over every line in the program and make sure it was satisfied in the drawing.
Minor changes from the sample site design program, buildings and site plan and you have a problem that takes some time. As simple as it is, you need the time to work out the nuances of the parking lot, building and “plaza” orientation and views. You also need the time to feel comfortable that this is the right solution. Meaning time to go over the program and feel, well “this is what they want.”
Even now, I hope I got what they wanted. Actually discussing it makes me think, I might have missed something, but Tuesday coming out of the exam I was confident I got it correct. Prior to starting I had no problem killing off the maximum number of trees. So I killed off the maximum number of trees, nudged buildings to make room for parking and angled the driveway (after the service turn off) to avoid remaining trees. I was uncomfortable with an aspect of my solution, but I didn’t fight it. Meaning the solution was solved literally to the program provided. [In the real world, things might be different. For example, more trees might be cut down to ease vehicular and human circulation.] If I had two more hours, I would have experimented to assure the best program solution and the best “design”/layout/real-world-alternative. Otherwise as far as I was concerned I was sticking with the “first” working rationale.
Did you see the end of that Super Bowl game? Oh man. I’m feeling it for Arizona. Losing like a champion is still losing. You didn’t have to see the whole game to know it was a good game. I took two sneek peeks. First peek, it was 17 to 7 for the Steelers. (Or something like that, I remember thinking defense would win the game.) Then later I looked and it was 23 to 20 for Arizona, Steelers have the ball with 43 seconds left, 2nd down and goal. How could I look away then?
Taking the risky peek, cuts into my study time. I’ll call it a study break, make a quick post and listen to the post game commentary. Another architectural registration exam “risk” is taking time off from work and giving project responsibility to others. Instead of being on my desk this week, a priority estimating project is on a co-worker’s desk. This is because I took time off for the exam. The hope is always that risk, minor and major, pay off with adequate reward.
PPI
Sketchbook Project