Hi all, well like many folks on here I've just come through weeks of agonising waiting, constantly checking emails, bouncing out of bed in the morning and logging on to see whether there's any news from NATS. Even though it's painful there's a kind of warped excitement about it.
The Stage 1 results email finally came through today. There it was sitting on the top of my inbox sandwiched in between a confirmation email from my motor insurance company and a bargain viagra offer from the online pharmacy. I'm still not sure how they got my address. I thought I'd open this one first, leaving the NATS email 'till last, just to build the suspense a bit more and because I was curious as to what offers the online pharmacy might have today. I opened it. A free penis pump with every order. You'd never see such a generous offer in Boots.
Anyway, the time has come. Let's open the email and end this suffering. It'd been that long (or at least felt it) since I'd taken the tests that I'd forgotton if I was confident or not. Motivation paper - like everyone I found it pretty simple, you learn the booklet - you know the answers. Cubes, I remember finding it hard to concentrate in that one because all you could here around the room during the test was a chorus of tuts, groans and sighs. This actually boosted my confidence a little knowing that everyone was getting a headache looking at them. Still I managed 40 out of 50. Diagramming - again, did 40. I was fairly confident that I'd done ok there. The DST paper, I only managed 13 out of the 20 but was fairly sure I'd got those 13 correct.
I failed.
I can't even blame it on the wobbly desk because the desk didn't wobble and the chair was very comfy.
I might demand to have it re-marked like you could in A-levels. My brother did that in his Physics A-level exam and went up 2 grades. 2 Grades!! The examiner must have forgotton to mark half the paper.
Either that or I'll just accept it, crack on and re-apply next year. Congrats to everyone that passed and made it to stage 2 and beyond, you guys must be really proud especially as the failure rate for S1 is reportedly 90%. I guess you can't blame NATS for only wanting the best people with the right skills to do the job. They'd never allow a controller to talk chat to his girlfriend about a dead cat while a plane in his sector ploughs into a helicopter. That's why NATS are the best.
Good look everyone, and see you next year
Ed