School Finals: 3 weeks ago!

School finals; what a disaster! I felt fairly confident, well I never feel confident before an exam but at least somewhat prepared as we’d done a fair amount of practice. I was not. For a start having 2 days for 7 exams is exhausting, we had about 20 minutes in between each which barely gives you time to think which one you’re sitting next and some of the exams are two hours long. I’m pretty sure I’d lost all focus half way through Flight Planning which was the last one on the first day. I think this is where getting a good night’s sleep is definitely more important than staying up late to study, you need to be on your toes for these exams as they are tough.

My results were as follows and I felt pretty disheartened, I had hoped to have a slightly better foothold on the subjects at this point and the reason I’m sharing is that maybe some of you have been in the same boat before and know how that feels.

Operational Procedures: 88%

Flight Planning: 80%

Gen Nav: 72%

Performance: 72%

Air Law: 72%

Radio Nav: 72%

And the icing on the cake, Mass and Balance: 64%

The pass mark for school finals is 65%; anything below this has to be re-taken. I found Mass and Balance okay during classes as there’s not too much new content to learn and it reminds me of Physics with a couple of formulas, I definitely underestimated it as this exam was tough. Quite a few people had to re-sit so I’m hoping they’d given us the tough questions to make EASAs feel easier, or to make us pull our fingers out. Disappointed as I was to have to do a re-sit it definitely made me focus that weekend and do a lot of mass & balance practice questions which I’m hoping will pay off in the long run.

Having the re-sit is one this but I wasn’t too happy with my other results either which makes me seriously question my abilities for EASAs, I only have a week to really crack on and bring these marks up. I also felt really guilty speaking to my instructors about them afterwards, like I’d let them down. They have been so helpful and encouraging all the way through and I’m so happy we can have that personal one on one help here.

On the Friday we were in school for de-brief day and it’s become a tradition here that classes dress up for the last official day of ground school. My class was going to be 8 Snow Whites as we couldn’t decide who should be the princess. We were there to go over the exams; it’s so frustrating seeing what you got wrong as some of the marks were such stupid ones to lose. We did get a fair amount of wolf-whistles and pictures taken that day, including one by the marketing team to go on Oxford’s page, here it is as promised:

The Super-girl is because his costume hadn't arrived yet and had to borrow a costume of mine last minute!