Still waiting for the engineering exam results?
The suspense is killing you?
So you’ve just finished taking a grueling engineering exam that will somehow dictate your destiny towards being a professional engineer. You took a professional licensure exam with the best preparation you can give. You guarantee you did your best, but there’s still a thought lingering you might fail. You are dying to know the results already to no longer prolong the agony, but you are also afraid to find out the results. It’s an inner conflict, really.
How do you deal with such uncertainty?
First thing’s first: what you feel after that important exam is perfectly normal. It’s okay to have the feeling of being unsure as long you know you have given your all – that way you won’t regret anything regardless of the results. It is only a matter of accepting what the results will be because it’s all done, you just have to wait.
What if you did not pass the exam? This thought is somehow a more consuming thought more than the thought of having been able to pass. Fine! If you want to have a dose of the reality, yes, there is indeed a possibility of failure. But the key is to look at the brighter side: there is also a possibility, maybe even greater, that you passed. Dwell on that thought until the professional exam results go out. You did not fail until the results say you did.
If something inside you tells that you are quite confident about the results, don’t rush to it just yet. Do not announce to everyone that you did overwhelmingly okay throughout the exam because you may be surprising everyone later including yourself. The worst comes when you least expect it.
You’re the only who can tell how you did with the exam, and that is how you base the odds of you passing or failing. It’s a gut feeling that works sometimes. But if you really feel like you’ve disappointed yourself in that exam, stop thinking about you being a failure. You may be failing the exam but it doesn’t mean you are failure – you can only be a failure if you stop trying.
Nonetheless, the safest reaction post-exam and pre-results of that exam is to be neutral: expect for the worst, but hope for the best.
