Tomorrow I take the Fundamentals of Engineering exam. It is comprised of 2 sections, with 4 hours allocated to each and a break in-between. The morning section is the same for everyone and has 120 multiple choice which cover the basics of many fields, Chemistry among them.

The afternoon section has 60 multiple choice which cover in depth one of the fields covered lightly in the morning section. You’re allowed to choose the topic area of the afternoon section you take. The expectation is that students take the afternoon section which corresponds to their major.

It’s likely that, as part of the application process months ago, I had to select the topic area of the afternoon section that I would be taking. If this is the case, I’m sure I chose Electrical Engineering. In the off chance we’re able to choose our afternoon section tomorrow, I’ll go with something else.

My choice of afternoon section topic will depend on what I’m trying to achieve. If I’m trying to pass the exam, I’ll go with Environmental Engineering, as it comes across as the easiest of them all. Yes, even though I’ve only ever gotten A’s and B’s in the EE courses I’ve completed, I think I would do better on environmental, which I know nothing about.

If I decide I’m going to fail regardless of afternoon section topic, I’ll choose Mechanical Engineering. The rationale behind this choice is that it’s a field I’m curious about, and maybe, based on the multiple choice questions asked, I can glean some insight as to the concepts these people are concerned with. The sum of my studying for this exam was about 1 hour a few weeks ago and I’m unfamiliar with the function of my recently purchased FE approved calculator, so if I have the option of choosing, I’ll probably go with Mechanical.

Last Thursday I had an Engineering Signal Analysis exam. It went alright, but as I was walking home afterward, I realized I’d answered a question incorrectly and, in some ways worse, knew what the true answer was. It’s happened before, contemplating the questions after I turn in the exam and coming up with a solution I feel confident about but which doesn’t match what I wrote down. It’s indicative of the importance of being in different states of mind over the course of tackling a problem. There have been instances of people lying awake in bed grappling over some dilemma and waking the next morning armed with an approach they had never considered. Too often, test takers only experience one state of mind, one that is partly concerned with the ticking of the clock. In my case last Thursday, maybe the blunder cost me 10 pts. It shouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but it’s aggravating nonetheless.