Exam time! Stress, lack of sleep and red bull pretty much summed up this week for me, though I know I spent my week off re-going over my books and did the whole of aviation exam at least once for each subject. I don’t know how I could have prepared more but still went in feeling nervous. The CAA examiners were there and you needed to sign in, show your passport and have your calculator checked before each exam. You weren’t even allowed to take your own pencils!

The exams were very much like school finals and were all done on the computer. I finished most of them well before the time limit which gave me time to check. Met, Instruments and PoF were all very hard as I expected and I even got a dodgy question in Human performance which is one I was hoping to do well in. The instructors have all been very supportive after the exams though when relating these questions to them. I also love the support you get from the other students here who help you to stay positive. In the end the only exam I felt confident I’d done well in after leaving was the two Comms papers.

The results were due to be posted on the Friday and you had to wait by your computer knowing that they could be released any time before 5pm; refreshing the browser every 2 minutes was still a necessity. Mine came through one by one but I am pleased to say I passed them all with an average of 88%, maybe slightly lower than I was hoping for at the start of the course but much better than I had thought considering how the exams did go. My lowest grade was Instruments (80% but hey, I passed!) and my highest was IFR Comms (96%). That day I went to the airport to assist with showing a group of students around the school, I love doing things like that, before preparing for a relaxing weekend of celebrating and not having to do any work for the first time since being here.

I started phase 2 today and they really didn’t go easy on us even though it was the first day back and we had only a weekend to recover from EASAs. It was strange having new subjects and new teachers (though we did keep some of our old ones which I was very happy about). The timetables are fun; not only is AP365 getting scarily close to the top of the list, the week is back to number 1, we are to start doing CBTs again AND it also has new colours for the new subjects, yay!