Wish me luck - spare dust gratefully accepted!

[Indylady]

Lots and lots and lots of dust!!

 

[Bella_mezzo]

you are going to ace it

 

[Pandora II]

Thank you all!

Both the papers today went better than I could have ever hoped for. You have to answer 4/6 questions in each paper and fortunately I would have been happy with any of them so I got to chose the ones I liked best rather than being stuck with the 4 least bad if that makes sense.

Anyway, relieved it's over... I haven't done written exams like those since 1990! My hand aches!

Thursday pm is the practical. Should be fine as long as I keep calm but I can't afford to screw even one stone up and as we have to draw full diagrams, write full descriptions and list full test results as well as doing them for most of the stones and there's only 9 minutes per stone I will be running on adrenaline (and Red Bull) for the whole 3 hours.

So dust for nice stones with clear spectrums, RI's and interference figures plus my not forgetting to check, check and triple check for colour-change and composites (we work in the dark so colour-change isn't that obvious at first glance) or second guessing myself would be very useful!

 

[Italiahaircolor]

Good luck! I'm a little late, but still! Good Luck!!

 

[lliang_chi]

Pandora, i'm glad you felt good about the papers today!!! Lots of luck for tomorrow! You sound like an old hat!!

~LC

 

[Arkteia]

Pandora, I am happy you felt good about written exam! Please keep us posted!

 

[Pandora II]

Sat the practical on Thursday pm. It was hideous - really tricky stones and the timing was just crazy. I was shaking so much at one point I couldn't get the stone on the refractometer!

Sadly none of the others who had the same stone set as me (you share between about 6-8 people and take each stone up to be exchanged as you finish it) were in my tutor group so I couldn't go through it afterwards and compare answers.

If you get 3 wrong it's an automatic fail and I know I got one wrong for definite (a semi-metamict brownish zirccon which was super-abraded and had no spectrum plus was cut in such a way that you couldn't see the back-facets doubled - the give away was there being no RI and the orange under LWUV. I went for Scapolite which of course goes orange under SWUV not LW and decided I couldn't get a proper RI - there were weird lines all over the place because it was semi-metamict - because it so abraded. Duh...), there are 3 others that I am a little unsure on but having spoken to my tutor yesterday I'm feeling a lot happier than I was: one of the stones I put down as a verneuil synthetic sapphire and when I came out I asked one of the others what they had for that stone and they said it was a natural blue sapphire that had been surface diffused. I got in a total state because I hadn't tested for that but the tutors just said that there was no way we would have got one in the exam as it would take too long to test. So big relief there - now I just hope it was a synthetic!

Everyone from my group came out of all the practical exams feeling drained and unhappy. Our tutor has an 80% pass rate (the overall pass rate is 45%) so we should have all done pretty well plus we've done a lot of mock exams and yet these were some of the hardest stones I have ever had - there were composites, synthetics, stones that looked like one thing and turned out to be another, stones that were a strange colour for their species, stones that looked like they could be one of 4 different things - and having been told that the exam stones would show things for definite, like clear spectrums and RI readings (which have to be stated to within a 0.002+/- accuracy)... well, nope they weren't clear at all on the whole.

I got 93% last year in the Cert.GA and was kind of hoping for a bit better than that (you need 95% for a distinction) but now I'm just hoping for a pass!

I know I've got a high score in the theory but I wouldn't like to call it on the practical - in any case there are retakes in January if necessary ! I guess there is a reason why the FGA is the hardest gemmological exam in the world...

We all went out last night after the final group finished - I have been paying the price today, I don't think I've had a hangover since my finals at university in 1996!

Results are some time in August so I'm just going to try and relax about it all till then - what is done is done and if I have to resit the practical then so be it! Fingers crossed!

 

[Skippy123]

sending dust

 

[Indylady]

Sending dust and of course looking forward to your results in August! I know you will do great Pandora. You are such an asset to the CS board and I always love reading your posts.

 

[lliang_chi]

Pandora, wow, that sounds like an exhausting practical. Dust to you, I hope you get the marks you're hoping for.

~LC

 

[rosetta]

I bet you £5 that you passed pandora

Keeping my fingers crossed for you, that was an evil sounding exam!

 

[jewelerman]

diamond dust and colored stone dust coming your way!

 

[Arkteia]

Sending best wishes. Just do not get overanxious over it, you have done your best and tried your hardest, you did all you could, took all these courses for such a long time. Let us hope it works for you. Of course we may have good or not so good luck on the exams, but you are so smart, so hardworking, I hope it pays off.