can't believe my eyes

During the last half of August and most of September I didn't listen to music on the bus. Or read novels. Or look out the window feeling happy to see the seasons. I studied. I read textbooks that I should have read in college, but didn't because I refused to buy textbooks after my first two years. I was trying to make my way through a book list provided by the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards, which is a useless society of folks that charge unfit sums of money to administer (rather poorly) exams to license people who have already graduated with degrees from accredited university programs. I had to sit for my first of five sections of the L.A.R.E. exam on September the 18th.

The test was really difficult to study for, the subject matter as broad as my entire education. I studied on the bus, but not much more than that since I was busy hiking and surfing and playing tennis. I took the test, and felt horrible about it. I looked up some of the questions which I had trouble with and determined that I had for sure missed 8 of 90 questions. How many more did I miss that I wasn't sure about? I knew I had failed. It seemed that they were actually trying to trick us instead of find out what we knew. I was so upset and annoyed that I had wasted $222 dollars at a time that I owe doctors a lot more than that. I had to wait four weeks to find out that I had failed for sure.

Thursday morning I got the email telling me that the scores were available online. I went to the website nervous and filled with dread. I tried to log on, but the server was busy. I tried for 7 hours more until I finally logged in without timing out (thank you CLARB for the stellar $222 service). The last click which would bring my results up took 5.5 minutes to load. The suspense was terrible and I had to leave and go to the restroom. I got back, waited one more minute, and then POW. There it was. PASS. I rubbed my eyes, sat stunned and then started jumping up and down in the office. I had passed, through some stroke of luck. I am now 1/5 of the way to calling myself a 'Landscape Architect', which you can't do in the state of Washington without passing all 5, beastly, expensive sections. One down, four to go.

I celebrated yesterday by going to the ocean to surf. The sun was warm, and the sky blue. Somehow the surf report which predicted a 6 foot swell was about half way correct. There were actually 12 foot, perfect waves similar to what you might see in Hawaii on a surfing movie. Biggest waves I have ever seen in Washington. Throw in an offshore wind and you have a surfer's dream. These of course were way too big for me, so I spent the day floundering about in the whitewater and trying to see if Eric, my 6'3" surfing partner du jour, who can actually catch waves like that, was having the best day of his life. It felt like June out there and even if the surf was terrible for me, a day in the water is better than most any other kind of day.