first exam

I had a pretty good week last week, I did my first exam. The actual drawing part of the exam seemed to be easy, and to go reasonably fast. In fact during the exam I drew an object three times not because I made a mistake but because I was working out the best way of flow. It is important to me that my drawings have a good start and finish.

I study for an exam by waiting until it is dark, turning out all the lights of my room so that the only thing I focus on is the computer screen, this gives me a lot more concentration. The only thing that breaks my concentration then is the sound of the wildlife that surrounds Enham which is a lot! If you close your eyes it is like listening to a Disney cartoon.

How the exam worked

For the exam Nick was my reader, this was fortuitous as Nick has a very clipped military accent, which made it easy for me to keep focused on what I needed to do. It is important to mention this because the quality of the Reader is essential especially during exam conditions.

There were times in the exam when I found it very difficult to cope, partly because the CAD setup on my college computer is different from the computer that I have been using to practise on, and partly because I had practised with DragonWord, speaking the commands into the command line rather than writing them but during my exam, my headset was broken so I had to do things in a way that I had not practised, which just added to the nerves. So it was a good job Nick was there, to structure my panic.

I have bought a cheap headset now, so I can use DragonWord on the college computers without too much trouble. It also became apparent during the exam that is difficult for a Reader to focus read in the way that an exam taker would normally scan read, Nick doesn't know what is of importance to me in the passage he is reading, so he can not pick out the most pertinent facts for me, which means that the process that would been done in one go by a normal exam taker, takes Nick and Me several passes before we get to the meat of the matter. This could be rectified if there was a way to get a digital exam paper, I could use a digital reader, that would mean that I'd be the position to take an exam independently, which is far more than I have been able to do in all my education.

What has happened with the 3-D plotter?

I've got in touch with Solvd Ltd, they are confident that they can carry out the work that needs to be done. At the moment, they are on the phone asking advice from another software company regarding my programme. And I explained to Steve of Solvd that it is important to get the programme done by the end of October as without the programme working, I will not be able to develop the vaccuum press, which is the hardware side of my project.