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I'd already signed up to sit part 1 (the one I already know) of the Special Enrollment exam on May 16th, and then assessed that studying for it would be a total waste of my effort and time, and therefore I started studying for part 3 (hazily familiar legal shit) a few days ago in order to get some kind of handle on what it was like and what kind of timeframe I should figure on for it. I had the usual experience one has with unfamiliar things one can actually do, namely shifting rapidly from 'wtf is this shit' to 'HAHAAH I GOT THIS'. So, okay, figured I should get it out of the way as soon after May 16th as reasonably possible.
And then I got pleasantly full of scotch and saw that a spot had opened up on May 9th! honestly though, I would rather spam attempts and get this shit over with than hold off until I have all this new stuff down ~perfect~, so esp. with part 3, I am not even going to take it hard if I don't pass first time. But I think I will.
There is, however a totally legit reason I was using the Prometric website at 3am; because it is honestly the worst website I have ever used, and 3am is the only time it is even reasonably accessible. This is what happens when government simultaneously monopolises a function and privatises it; you get shitty provision, delivered by the lowest bidder, who evidently hasn't upgraded their site since 2004 and who know less about scaling even than I do. That the registration process is spread over way way way unnecessarily many pages (each of which takes about an hour to load during the daytime, no joke) evidently doesn't help with their load problems. I spent eight hours trying to register for part 1 in the middle of the day before giving up and vowing to never try to use Prometric.com before midnight ever again.
I am paying $315 to these people for this dogshit, horribly designed process, and I haven't even picked a time to do part 2 yet. This afternoon I spent almost an hour sat on their help webtalk trying to get a basic question answered, and their customer service agents were too busy to assist me :) The webchat is only available for a few hours on weekends. The phone help is only available in the daytimes midweek. The website is only available in the small hours of the night. It's completely amazing.
And then I got pleasantly full of scotch and saw that a spot had opened up on May 9th! honestly though, I would rather spam attempts and get this shit over with than hold off until I have all this new stuff down ~perfect~, so esp. with part 3, I am not even going to take it hard if I don't pass first time. But I think I will.
There is, however a totally legit reason I was using the Prometric website at 3am; because it is honestly the worst website I have ever used, and 3am is the only time it is even reasonably accessible. This is what happens when government simultaneously monopolises a function and privatises it; you get shitty provision, delivered by the lowest bidder, who evidently hasn't upgraded their site since 2004 and who know less about scaling even than I do. That the registration process is spread over way way way unnecessarily many pages (each of which takes about an hour to load during the daytime, no joke) evidently doesn't help with their load problems. I spent eight hours trying to register for part 1 in the middle of the day before giving up and vowing to never try to use Prometric.com before midnight ever again.
I am paying $315 to these people for this dogshit, horribly designed process, and I haven't even picked a time to do part 2 yet. This afternoon I spent almost an hour sat on their help webtalk trying to get a basic question answered, and their customer service agents were too busy to assist me :) The webchat is only available for a few hours on weekends. The phone help is only available in the daytimes midweek. The website is only available in the small hours of the night. It's completely amazing.