Study Study Study!

This has been a slow week at my office.  School K is officially out the office, and my other projects don't really kick off till next week.  Also, everyone has been in meetings throughout the day, so I am by myself here and there.  To occupy my time, I decided to write yesterday's blog post.  When I finished that task, I studied for the Architect Registration Exam.

Boot camp Architecture with Brian has been frustrating, so I've been studying at work during lunch so I don't throw my book at him.  (of course I wouldn't do that)  First, I started with the multiple choice section.  Using my online study guides, I went over the 4 sections for Construction Documents and Services:

1. CODES & REGULATIONS
(5-8 percent of scored items)

2. ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
(4-9 percent of scored items)

3. CONSTRUCTION DRAWINGS & PROJECT MANUAL
(41-46 percent of scored items))

4. PROJECT & PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
(41-46 percent of scored items)

Results:
Meh.  I did the practice questions and I only got half the questions right.  Contract documents are my weakness.

At the end of the day, I started my Vignette practice programs for Construction Documents and Services.  This section contains a plan where you have to draw a building section at the given section cut.

Results:
I think this will be a piece of cake for me.  The drawing program is completely different from Autocad; but once I got the hang of it, it was a breeze.  I had problems of the height between the ceiling and the bottom of the joists, but I corrected my mistake.

Overall, I think I need to work on my multiple choice questions and my timing.  Other than that, studying wasn't too bad.  I just need to keep it up before my study group meeting in May!

PSA:
Coming May 1st, NCARB is coming out with a cloud-based service for the Practice Programs compatible with 64-bit systems.  They currently have a free beta service running till April 30.  After this date, there will be an annual fee of $10 to use this program.  They still have the free downloadable programs that run on 32-bit computers.  Read more here!