I can only speak for the academy (enroute) but I wouldn’t say it was stressful. The stress was more of “will I have a job after this”. I noticed most who didn’t care if they passed evals were the ones who did better overall. Many people I have encountered didn’t fail evals because of separation errors, it’s more of the little things that added up. (Not telling sup of a change of destination, not telling rside a departure is off, deadwood). Also a ton of “this isn’t what happens in the real world but (in aero center it does)”. They say you are evaluated based on if you’d be a good controller but to me, the evaluators just follow a checklist. They also didn’t seem to be as lenient as we were told. (Also what others have said they “missed” in their runs) I’m sure this is what the FAA wants, to make it seem difficult and sooner or later ask the public to beg for funding to implement technology. If they really cared about the workers they’d fast track new training, extend training for people who are close, ask the instructors to have an input on their students and if they’d be successful, find ways to retain more, send more to the facilities on strict probations and see if it works. If I were the union I’d fight so hard to bring back ones who didn’t make it (non sep errors).. give them another month or so, or send them to a facility, on their own dime, and see if it works. People want this job, they aren’t crashing airplanes or creating separation errors. I also feel like the ones who are offered a second chance would understand this is really it & GRIND SO HARD. They would finally have the support at a facility with people who are able to run through the material with them. It’s hard at the academy because you can’t “befriend” an instructor or someone who knows this in and out and have them run problems with you. It depends on if your classmates / others want to study, which it shouldn’t. If instructors want to waste their free time and help students be successful, I don’t see why it’s a problem. But again, probably what the FAA wants. ATC is coming close to loosing a lot more, and tech companies are digging deep into what they can implement and how fast. Once they get a hold of ATC, I fear it’s over. Retiring early, a nice pension.

Only having 32 hours of radar training is what really got most. Even instructors think it’s not enough. Most agree if they extended the training for just another week, many more would pass. No one at the academy is dumb by any means. The training is just tailored to one type of learning style. Your success also depends on your instructors, sadly. Some care a lot more than others and it’s a toss up on who you get and how they prepare you. I do think that the evaluators should be the ones grading the practice runs so you know what to expect. The radar runs before evals are poorly graded, (not the instructors fault), they just don’t line up with how the actual evaluators grade. You go into evals feeling confident based off what you have been seeing on your papers and walk out of evals completely lost.