Anger Management #2: Pass/Fail Letters

The ARE process makes me want to start fires. Nothing huge, just a small toilet paper fire in the bathroom of the testing center. But that would only hurt the maintenance staff of the office building involved, and that’s not who an ARE candidate should direct rage toward. These rants are an outlet to prevent any harm coming to you, Prometric-tenant building maintenance workers. You’re welcome.

I know you must grade a lot of exams. I mean there were around thirty from my school’s alums alone last year! Whew! So I guess we’re lucky to get any feedback at all. Positive feedback is a waste of space, so that is not given, ergo being given no information equals a shiny gold star – you got it, dude! But failure prompts a little more info, so we can correct what we did. Emphasis on “a little” more. Yes, you FAILED MISERABLY on the stair vignette. Everything else was fine except SOMETHING ON THE STAIR. We’re not going to tell you what, as you certainly remember everything you did on that particular drawing – you know what you did, dumbass. You now get to slowly lose your mind as OMIGOD DID I DRAW THE STAIRS UPSIDE DOWN? DID I END THEM 6 FEET ABOVE THE FLOOR I CAN’T REMEMBER! GAAAH! Maybe you emptied out that gutter right over a door way, maybe you didn’t… there’s no proof you didn’t, and thus, no proof that you are not a retard. So suck on that for six months, and try harder next time. Good job on everything else though! Except that thing. You know.

Anger Management #1: The ARE Forum

The ARE process makes me want to start fires. Nothing huge, just a small toilet paper fire in the bathroom of the testing center. But that would only hurt the maintenance staff of the office building involved, and that’s not who an ARE candidate should direct rage toward. These rants are an outlet to prevent any harm coming to you, Prometric-tenant building maintenance workers. You’re welcome.

The ARE Forum is great.  It serves a very important purpose in filling the void left by the major publications in that it takes information given by verified sources and manages to confuse the shit out of everybody.

"I heard handrails have to be 2” from the wall." 

"Oh yeah? Well I heard they have to be 1” and overlap exactly."

"WRONG. They are supposed to travel the perimeter of the room and spell out the name of your favorite architect on the South wall, as long as there are no windows on it.  Also, here’s my vignette for you all to grade. I don’t really contribute on anyone’s posts ever, but if you all want to take your time and grade this site plan I shat out in a half hour, it’d be awesome bro, because I take the test in three hours."  So now its up to your fellow ARE candidates, who are pissed off because they’ve been skipping happy hours to study for a week straight, to gently break the news that the blue line is water and you’re not designing a building for Venice in a totally constructive and non-snarky way. And Mr. Sajjad, I get what you’re doing making things really harder than they need to be, leg weights and such, but don’t think your name isn’t cursed to high heavens twenty to thirty times a day. St. Peter may ask what was up with all that at the Pearly Gates.

But I appreciate that without the excessive hand-wringing and sob-story fest that is the forum, we would have nowhere else to go except $400 seminars and $40 AIA “study sessions” where they go over the answers on the NCARB sample tests, even though they print the answers at the end of the test for free. Fee trap! Of course, we could always just go to our local library and read the reading list NCARB helpfully recommends at the end of each sample exam to get our knowledge on – I would do that but the reference section at the library is the homeless peoples’ new capital, and they’re always holding meetings there. Stabby meetings.