What am I happy about?
I survived another building-code exam, and think I did better than I feared. (I’ll find out in a couple of weeks, when I get a letter from the Ministry of Housing.)
Why am I concerned more than usual about this?
Well, the exam was about “Small Buildings”. These are buildings that are built like houses, and measure up to 600 square metres (roughly 6400 square feet) in area, but can be used for other purposes, like convenience stores. There are additional requirements for these buildings, which houses do not have to meet. The exam included material about houses as well. Once I pass it, and satisfy certain other requirements, I’ll be able to design and sell house plans in Ontario. And I’m trying to get ready by June, so that I can sell plans to people who want to build this summer, so I’m on something of a deadline.
I had taken the “Small Biuldings” course earlier, where I was informed that its material was complementary to that of the “House” course, and both would be covered by the Small Buildings exam.
So I book and pay for the House course as well, at Loyalist College. I book holidays and arrange a place to stay. I also book and pay for the Small Buildings exam (a separate affair, handled through the Ministry).
Then, a week before the course was to start, I get a phone call from the college. The course was cancelled! Not enough students had signed up! Of course, I would be issued a refund… by cheque, even though I had paid by Mastercard. Somehow they hadn’t called me weeks earlier.
What was I to do? Even if I missed the exam, I would still have paid for it. The Ministry offers no refunds if the candidate changed plans or was unable to show, except for medical reasons. I decide to order the House self-study guide, published by the Ministry and sold though a place with the curiously-anonymous name of Orderline.
So I load more money onto my Mastercard and order the self-study guide. I request pickup at Orderline’s location in Etobicoke, since it isn’t that far from my apartment, and taking a cab there before going to work is cheaper than their shipping. My card is charged for the proper amount, no problem.
I wait a few days. No email from Orderline saying it was ready. So I phone them. They’d somehow lost my order. It is now less than three weeks to the exam. I look again at the receipt: amount correct; no item listed. No item listed? I send a scan of the receipt and a screenprint of my online Mastercard statement to Orderline, and they promise to look into it.
More days pass. Orderline finally calls back: yes, there’d been a problem and we are readying your order. The following Tuesday I get an email that the book is ready. I finally make my way down to Orderline on the way to work on the Friday, it being payday and all and I have money for the cab and haven’t slept in.
I get the self-study guide. It’s six hundred pages long. :eek: I start reading on the bus to work. The guide mentions that it would take about eighty hours to go through all its material. And I only have a week :eek: :eek: And, it mentions that some of the material is not covered in the book and will be taught in the course!!! :eek: :eek: :eek:
I have a sinking feeling. After my initial panic, however, I realise that I am very glad I had the Small Buildings course. It and my other course had introduced me to where everything is, and a lot of this is knowing where to find things. The courses are intended for people who have had previous experience in the field, and I had helped construct several houses of the type I want to design, plus, I had gone to architecture school way back in the [del]Bronze Age[/del] eighties. I’d been doing a lot of preliminary design work and exercises and learning for a year or so.
So I read. And I read. And I start to do the exercises in the book, but I realise on the Tuesday before the exam that I don’t have time for them, and my most important need is to nail down the locations of everything I will need in the Code. So I just keep reading.
Friday, exam day, rolls around. I wake early and take the bus to Peterborough. (Did I mention that this was the closest location I could find to Toronto with exam spaces available in April?) I get to Peterborough with my big bag of books that must be 20 or 30 kilos. (It’s an open-book test, and the Building Code is biiig…) I walk the half-block to the city bus terminal and catch the bus signed for Fleming College. I’ll be early, and have an extra hour and a half to look things over and eat.
As we enter the college grounds half an hour later, I notice that the street address is on a different street that the one in my letter of admission for the exam. Oh no….
The friendly lady at reception informs me that, yes indeed, there are two campuses of the College in Peterborough and the exam is at the other one.
I call a cab. With the money I was planning to use for lunch. Eventually it arrives and we go over to the other campus… which is only a ten-minute bus ride from downtown on a different bus. :smack: I get out, pay the cabbie, and go inside. I locate the exam room, unpack my books, set myself up, and get settled.
The exam candidates are a mixture of people, mostly building officials and tradespeople of various sorts, from their thirties into their late fifties. Most people are taking exams about different parts of the Building Code: plumbing for inspectors, sewage systems for installers, legalities of the Code, structural design; I am one of two taking the Small Buildings exam.
After a time, the “invigilator” arrives to sign us in, hand out the exams, and keep watch over us. She is a beautiful brown-skinned woman. This is a pleasant change from a rather frazzling experience.
It’s time. I start. The exam is 75 multiple-choice questions. I have three hours.
For reference, I can only use the building code itself, with supplements. I have them spread across my desk, split up among half a dozen binders for ease of cross-reference. I also have a pencil and a non-programmable calculator. The exam also has a scoring sheet where we have to shade in numbered “bubbles” corresponding to out answers; these will be scanned later when the exam is marked.
I know from my previous exam that I will only have about 2.5 minutes per question, after setting aside time at the end to fill in the scoring sheet. So I go through and do all the easy to moderately-hard questions first, setting aside the troublesome ones to the end. I am glad to find that out of 75 questions, the majority are easy; most of the rest require some searching but aren’t too hard.
Only three questions are puzzlers. One I end up getting; the other two I fill in as guesses. I feel I did as well as on my other exam, and I passed that one. Even if I don’t pass this one, I will simply study more and request another exam. I’m not worried.
At last, the exam is over. We pack our stuff up and leave the room, which has become very hot and stifling. I go outside, and, wonder of wonders, the air is warm, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and Jackson Creek babbles pleasantly nearby. It’s spring! Finally, the first real warm spring weather, and it’s the weekend, and I can go to my friends’ place and relax.
In their hot tub. 
). But I’m going to try really hard with these ones - we’re going to the nursery on the weekend and I’ll get proper soil and fertiliser and everything. I’m going to start with lavender, so it’ll smell beautiful whenever I go out onto the balcony.
about it.