☑ PA Pass ! Defeated the Beast 🤜🐉
(2nd attempt) 🥊🥊
😪I feel like I just spent 6 weeks delivering a baby 👶
PA was a challenge but it helped me refine my study strategy and structure and now I'm ready to tackle the PPD/PDD bifecta.💪
🏆Credit where Credit is due:
- Jared Hopkins 📰post "Passed PA --- on the 2nd attempt" - I read this post three times before the actual exam. Good tips
- Elif Bayram 💡 her resources and practice exams are difficult enough to get you sharp
- The bad-@$$ women 💁 in my Study-Buddy Zoom sessions network (Munira Zuher Karimjee and Tania E.)
- Benjamin Norkin 📚 at Hyperfine and his resources
- Marina Curac 📓 Resources - If you don't know, you should know
- Black Specs 🤓 was useful for test-timing. Be mindful of these exams as they are limiting in that it becomes easy to memorize the answers after a while. For an added challenge, Take a straight hit of Elif or Ballast Practice Exams.
Looking forward to PPD next, since I understand that it's similar to PA but without as much programming NSF/GSF/USF, etc. mathematics and more about the details of building systems which is more my wheelhouse. I anticipate many hours deep in Arch.Gphx.Stds - Bring it on 🚀
If you're still having trouble, I can't advise enough: the simple practice of note-taking, flash-card writing and re-writing. 📝📝📝📝 - It might seem dumb in a digital existence but the mechanical, muscle-motor memory will pay dividends.🎰 - Especially if you're a visual learner like I am.
Invaluable Primary Resources:
- ASC - Arch. Studio Companion
- Problem Seeking - Especially the mathy parts
- SPDH - Site Plan. Design Hbk.
- MEEB & HCL - Good Reads. Read the pertinent sections that you need to bone up on.
- ADA Stds. - Flashcard these MFers
- IBC - Swallow your pride: Read the code itself. Break it down for yourself in a way that makes sense (Flashcards, Word doc outline, whtvr) I got a Case Study that gave me an entire 3 or 4 sections of code. Know where to find stuff quickly
☘️ Good luck, my nerds. I'm rooting √ for you.
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Congrats! Did you find the white board a hindrance with the case studies? I'm taking the PA in a week and I'm using Microsoft Paint to practice scribbling out diagrams and writing down numbers and calculations of sf. Seems like it takes an awful long time but that might just be me.
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Brandon Ramon - Re: The Whiteboard, the short answer is 'sorta'. Similarly, I began using a fakey, browser-accessible MS paint-type website: https://jspaint.app/ to mimic the experience (the Black Spectacles practice exam Whiteboard also successfully mimics the clunkiness of the Whiteboard) but after a while, I made it my goal to basically use the Whiteboard as least as possible. It made me more intuitive with my math skills which I'm admittedly quite poor at, normally. I use the Whiteboard mostly for collecting valuable info from Case Studies to have all relevant data in one place at one time.
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One can also access ncarb's actual whiteboard through the demo exam in your ncarb account. I took PA before the whiteboard happened, but I had to take PPD and PDD with that piece of nonsense. For the two months leading up to the exams, I did all my practice questions and tests with the demo exam open in a browser to practice with the actual thing. You'll also get a sense of what is missing from the resources tabs (quite a bit, once you dive into it). By test day I knew all the (many) limitations of the whiteboard and resources tabs and had been able to adjust my test-taking strategy to accommodate the software.
Tips I picked up: don't use the scroll wheel to zoom, don't resize the box, if you run out of space open a new tab (I only ever had 5 open), don't use the eraser tool, you have to click out of the text box (but in the whiteboard) before closing the whiteboard or you lose what you just typed, treat what goes on the whiteboard as permanent, and the whiteboard closes every time you go to a new question. But figure out what works for you, and good luck to you both on your next exams!
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