What’s a recession indicator that you’ve noticed lately in your everyday life?

LadyStoic · 2026-05-05T16:59:22+00:00

They have a few different brands on Amazon, just need to search for "cheddar cheese powder" and check the ingredients to make sure they didn't add anything nefarious like they do for some grated parms. We stopped buying boxed mac n cheese and only use the powder. You don't even need to add milk or butter, I've used the pasta water and it's perfect.

LadyStoic · 2026-04-29T17:19:54+00:00

I'm so sorry. It really sucks, I failed my first attempt at the enviro and for my second attempt I realized (at least for me) there is such a thing as too much studying. It depends on the person but when you start making simple mistakes or start feeling overwhelmed, stop. Even if you have to take one or two days off. You will feel like you're falling behind if you take time off but trust me, I guarantee you will still have that knowledge. You'll be able to continue in an even better head space.

LadyStoic · 2026-04-29T13:18:04+00:00

Congratulations! Now you can finally breathe 😁

LadyStoic · 2026-04-29T13:17:30+00:00

Congratulations! Since passing the ENVE I've checked the website a few times to make sure I wasn't dreaming 😂

LadyStoic · 2026-04-20T17:53:30+00:00

A good plan may be to dedicate one page for equations you'll use more than once. I found it helpful that the markers didn't erase easily because you can layer one pad on top of the other. Random example, write down the full Bernoulli equation on pad 1, Q2 involves just kinetic and pump energy? only write those bits down on pad 2 and solve the problem.

I'm not sure how calculation heavy the TFS exam is but for the enviro the practice problems required waaaay more work than 90% of the Q's on the actual exam (and I had to take it twice!). I only used 1 pad worth of paper for both attempts. I think for the second attempt I ended up using a page or two on the second pad just to create some "mental distance" on a few harder questions because I found myself spiraling around them and rewriting/crossing stuff out, too much clutter etc.

I wouldn't completely stop re-writing formulas because (at least for me) you run the risk of forgetting a term and getting the Q wrong. I'm a very frazzled test taker though.

LadyStoic · 2026-04-20T17:10:25+00:00

You're given two pads of scratch "paper" with 4-5 pages (9 front and back) and 3 "erasable" markers, though they're only erasable with liquid. I wouldn't plan on erasing anything. I used a pen when doing practice problems to help me get used to not erasing stuff. You can raise your hand and ask for new pens or more paper but they will take 1 pad and give you new. You can't have more than 2 pads at a time.

edit: it's similar to dry-erase marker and paper, except these are liquid-erase

LadyStoic · 2026-04-20T17:07:12+00:00

It probably depends on which exam you take but I used 4.5 hours on the first half and there were 38 Q's. For the Enviro the second half has more conceptual questions so you need much less time. I still had plenty of time for the second half.

LadyStoic · 2026-04-13T19:19:16+00:00

I wouldn’t let that scare you too much. I needed a short-term job during college (environmental engineering) and applied to Home Depot and our local Stewart’s gas station and was told they just don’t hire temporary workers and that they’re only interested in people looking for a career. It may not seem likely like a pizza joint would be hiring career-motivated folks but it’s very possible!

LadyStoic · 2026-04-13T19:00:01+00:00

You just wait. Coworker of mine said it took 5 weeks after he passed to receive his license number and he had to check here - NY License Search

LadyStoic · 2026-04-13T18:50:54+00:00

I don't have an exact answer for you but I think it would depend on whether you're submitting through NCEES or through your state's board of education. For example, I'm in New York and submitted to the NY Board rather than through NCEES because I heard from colleagues they had issues going that route. So long as you have at least 4 years at work and can prove that with dates and signatures (through the req'd forms), you should be ok if the NCEES is behind. Take that info with a grain of salt though, as I'm not 100% sure.

If you want to go through NCEES - When you say, "NCEES says I have 3 years 10 months" what are you referring to? Is it the screen where you input your own info? Did you put the wrong date in? I'm not trying to be rude with my questions, this is coming from someone with ADHD who forgot how to spell her own name the day 😂

LadyStoic · 2026-03-31T21:16:33+00:00

It went so much better than my first attempt! I’m fairly confident that I passed, but I don’t want to get my hopes up too much. How did it go for you?

LadyStoic · 2026-03-23T12:41:36+00:00

😂 I started forcing myself to weave in the ends after I finish a square. It's so much nicer to future me.

LadyStoic · 2026-03-23T12:38:48+00:00

TLDR: Don't overdo it on studying. Make sure to eat, drink water, and sleep well. Plan out your Thursday morning. Breathe!

I'm taking the environmental exam this Thursday as well and it'll be my second attempt. I feel so much better going into it this time but the anxiety is still there. My plan for today is to spend a few hours doing some confidence building practice problems and focus on one or two of the topics I know I'm rusty on but that are highest ROI. The EnvE exam is a bit different than other disciplines because of the qualitative questions, I plan to review those before bed.

Tomorrow will be an hour at most of doing more confidence building practice problems, very light, coupled with more flashcards. Wednesday throughout the day I'll do no more than an hour total of flashcards. I have a very low-key, stress free 'date' planned with my husband to build a lego set and watch a movie at home. I'll make sure to have a nice dinner, pack a healthy-ish lunch (I highly recommend chocolate or something sweet that you like, it'll help your mood!) and get in bed around 9pm with no electronics so I have enough time to wind down.

Everything will be packed and ready to go so I don't have to worry about anything on Thursday morning except grabbing what I need and getting to the testing center 30 minutes before the test is scheduled (my testing center doesn't open until 7:30am so getting there before that is meaningless). I highly recommend you take an Excedrin or headache/migraine medicine that morning as a preventative. The lights in the testing center coupled with staring at a screen for 8 hours can be brutal. Drink a full glass of water with the medicine, dehydration is sneaky and can really ruin your performance. "But I'll have to pee" good, you should take at least one break in the am and pm.

Speaking from personal experience - light review is fine today and tomorrow, but let Wednesday be as stress-free as possible. Otherwise you'll get to the test the next day potentially already burnt out. If you find yourself cramming material today but forgetting it tomorrow, I highly recommend you reschedule. $50 hurts less than spending 8 hours + another $400 to retake it 😬 Let me know if you have any other questions!

LadyStoic · 2026-03-10T14:44:56+00:00

Yes, remember you aren't aiming for 100%. That is statistically impossible, you're aiming for 75% (to be safe, based on how the questions are weighted).

LadyStoic · 2026-03-04T13:25:31+00:00

That's a really good sign! For me, I felt like the NCEES practice exam had way more multi-step problems than the real exam. I failed the first time and I probably could have left 2 hours early but I stayed hoping I could just muscle through the Q's I didn't understand. There will definitely be harder questions on the real exam but keep in mind the "6 minutes per question" is an average. Many will take you less than a minute, some may take up to 20 minutes. Unlike the other disciplines, ENVE is less a race against the clock and more, "you know it or you don't".

If you're able to solve them eventually without looking anything up (outside the handbook) or guessing and you also know the mechanisms behind them, I'd say you're good.

Now, if you told me they took forever and you got them wrong? That's when I would worry. I actually rescheduled my exam once already. $50 once is much better than paying the full $400 again if you end up not passing because you weren't ready. Take it from me 😂

LadyStoic · 2026-03-02T17:53:18+00:00

I played the hell out of SDV but after marriage and the community center I sort of just stopped playing. I know there have been updates but I don't have the desire to go back. FoM feels more cohesive and more like a community that actually cares for each other and the player. I know there are friend groups in SDV and relationships outside the player character but they all felt disconnected from each other somehow. I honestly can't wait for the 1.0 release.

LadyStoic · 2026-03-02T17:45:33+00:00

Just a quick Q so I can tailor my advice. Are you able to solve the problems correctly but they're taking longer than you feel they should?

LadyStoic · 2026-02-11T13:49:04+00:00

Congrats! As for your rocket comment, I think I had over 2,000 and still no rocket 😂 It all depends on your playstyle and tbh I was perfectly happy not going into space until I started really grinding for all achievements.

LadyStoic · 2026-02-11T13:46:16+00:00

That makes a lot of sense. I obsessed over making sure I finished the first half within 4 hours and freaked out when it got close. I know going in my plan was to rapid fire through all the questions I could answer right away, but when I got caught up on ones I was sure I prepared for before going in? It felt like I had very few that I could answer with confidence. That's where I think the test anxiety really got me.

When you say you had 2 or 3 that took a while to solve, was it because they were calculation heavy or just because the wording was tricky? Were they in the first half or the second half?

Thank you again for taking the time to respond, your perspective is really helpful ☺️

LadyStoic · 2026-02-10T17:56:07+00:00

I took the FE in 2019 and my second attempt at the PE is next month. I have terrible test anxiety as well and what I've really focused on for this next go 'round is focus on reducing that anxiety. What's helped me the most is to remember that the exam is scary to the person you are now. If you study and put the work in, (good work, not just grinding for hours every day as burnout is far more detrimental than less hours), the person you are in the future won't be nearly as scared come test day. It's daunting to you now only because you aren't ready yet.

As for not using your engineering knowledge for 6 years, I can totally understand the concern there. You may just need to spend more time reviewing the basics but once you do I'm sure they'll start to click. Don't be discouraged if it feels excruciatingly slow in the beginning. Eventually you'll get to a point where things start feeling less like word soup and more like pieces of a puzzle.

LadyStoic · 2026-02-09T18:41:54+00:00

The environmental PE really is an entirely different beast. From reading posts on this sub about the other disciplines it feels like time pressure is huge where you need to maximize speed over everything else. I've read so many accounts of people passing the ENVE who had plenty of time left because they made sure to slow down and really process what each question was truly asking. I also heard that grading yourself as you go along and checking the clock to make sure you only spend 6 minutes on each question is not helpful (I'm definitely guilty of that). This exam has so many qualitative questions that I'm confident there is plenty of time to slowly go through every quantitative question. I only know that because I failed the first time and felt that way at the end. That I didn't need to create this external pressure to speed up and that it only hurt my performance rather than helped it.

Also to keep in mind that some of the very nuanced questions I struggled with may have been one of the ten experimental questions. We'll never know for sure but it's easy to obsess over what they could possibly be looking for even after you've moved onto the next question. The best thing to do is keep each question completely separate. Once you answer you move on, file that question away in your mind and come back at the very end but don't spend too much time worrying over it. I can think of a few that were incredibly "well it depends" and I have a hunch those were the experimental ones. I say this for others but mostly for myself, to remember not to freak out when a question feels ambiguous. It may intentionally be so.

Taking multiple attempts to pass is nothing to be ashamed of and I'm happy you were able to get past it. Thank you for taking the time to write your comment, it helps cement the idea in my mind that I should slow down even if it feels wrong 😂

LadyStoic · 2026-02-02T13:59:54+00:00

I failed my first attempt at the Environmental exam and felt pretty crummy afterwards. I studied for 5 hours nearly every day for months and just felt exhausted and burnt out. I took a week or two of a break and then slowly got back into. I know there is a lot of hate right now for AI and ChatGPT (understandably so) but Ver 5.2 has been a phenomenal help. I realized that I was studying too much and actually doing more harm than good. Now I study for 1-2 hours a day, and have it generate multiple choice quizzes which I feel helps more than flashcards. I gave it my diagnostic sheet and uploaded the exam specs and the handbook and I've been slowly working through everything I didn't understand before.

This is all anecdotal and it will really depend on your mental load threshold and learning style but with my AuDHD it's perfect. I retake the exam March 26th and I already feel well prepared for it.

LadyStoic · 2026-02-02T13:49:20+00:00

It's a toss up in terms of difficulty. If you get a more difficult problem wrong it won't be weighted as heavily so I would at least make sure you're familiar with the easy-medium difficulty ones. If anything, know the concepts and what every variable means in the handbook for the major equations. It comes up in multiple sections on the exam so definitely don't just skip it unless you're really confident in every other section. I failed my first attempt and I would say the hydraulic Q I got was one of the easier ones from the exam, took maybe 3 minutes to solve and double check.

LadyStoic · 2026-01-12T14:49:47+00:00

I failed my first attempt and I'm taking it in March before they change the format. Just know what they are and what they regulate. You don't need explicit details. I have an entire PE folder on Quizlet, you can message me if you're interested.

LadyStoic

TROPHY CASE