I agree essentially with everything that Send Clowns and Scroggs have said here. I have my exams now but it wasn't easy at the time for two reasons; I had been out of studying for some time and one of the subjects kept eluding me by the dreaded 1-2% (isn't 74% a killer?!). Most of the subjects I coped very well with, but I really should have sought more specialist help at the time rather than suffering further failures by reading through the same material and giving it another shot. It really does boil down to hard work, having a good studying technique and knowing when you need that extra help. If you do fail an exam or two the pressure that you put yourself under at the time doesn't help! I’m sure that the same is true of the flying tests – not everyone gets a first time pass in their IR!!
I now recruit pilots’ worldwide and I have never asked one of them if they passed their written exams/flight tests first time. As Scroggs suggests we are interested in the licence, medical, flying hours and whether you would ‘fit in’ more than anything else. Gaining your licences is one thing, getting a flying job is another – now if someone could help me on that one I’d be grateful… Good luck everyone!