Isaac Oakeson: Hey! What's up, everybody? Isaac here with Civil Engineering Academy, jumping on real quick. Thanks for joining me on another podcast episode. Today, I bring a course student of The Ultimate Civil FE Review Course on, and we talk about his journey into passing. He took the FE exam much later in -- I wouldn't say "much later in life," but later in life. And he's actually from Canada.

Isaac Oakeson: So you're maybe wondering why the heck is he taking the FE exam? But the truth is that Canada does allow people to take the FE exam to work towards their P.Eng, which is similar to the PE. And so, he joined our course, The Ultimate Civil FE Review Course, and describes his journey into subjects. He didn't even have a civil engineering degree. He specializes in geotech, and he is part owner of the company that he works in up in Canada.

Isaac Oakeson: This is Andrew Jackson that I bring on. Not the president, but he goes by AJ. So, I just had a fun conversation with him. He's up in Canada. He recently passed his FE as a member of our course, and I just wanted to bring him on and talk about his own journey. What he's doing, how he's doing it, how he passed the FE exam, especially not even knowing all the subjects that are involved there, and getting over that hump. So his story is fascinating.

Isaac Oakeson: So, Andrew Jackson I bring on to share that story with you. I hope you enjoy this episode. I think it will give you some motivation if you don't have an engineering degree that you can still do this exam. He's even working towards his PE as well. And so, he's got some great ambitions. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this episode. It was fun for me to have this conversation with him. And it's gonna be coming up right after this.

Isaac Oakeson: All right. AJ, welcome to the Civil Engineering Academy Podcast. How are you doing?

Andrew Jackson: I'm great, Isaac. Thanks for having me here. How are you?

Isaac Oakeson: Hey, I'm doing pretty well. It's almost the weekend here, you know? So I can't complain too much.

Andrew Jackson: Yeah.

Isaac Oakeson: Summertime. Well, thank you for joining on. You've been a member of our course, The Ultimate Civil FE Review Course, and I wanted to have you on, in you're graceful enough to come on, to talk about your own little journey to acing this thing. But I also found your story unique. So I wanted to see if we could share that with everyone.

Isaac Oakeson: So, I guess to begin this though, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do for a living, where you live, and give us a little bit more about your own background.

Andrew Jackson: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, Isaac. I live in Victoria, BC in Canada. For all the Americans that don't know where that is, the west coast kind of near Seattle, just north of Seattle. I've been working at a geotechnical engineering firm for about 15 years. My background from university was in, you know, geology, geoscience, and geomorphology, primarily. So my sort of journey through the engineering world, you know, came about through being brought into that company and, you know, just expanding year after year on engineering exposure and learning.

Andrew Jackson: And yeah. Over the course of those years, I've been involved in many projects and I've been, you know, having sort of an ongoing effort to be more familiar in the professional sphere of engineering as well as geoscience.

Andrew Jackson: So, currently working on acquiring a P. Eng, which is sort of the equivalent of the PE in the states. Like, I have a P. Geo, which is the geosciencist professional designation that I've had since, I think 2013, is when I got that. Mostly, you know, the scope of my professional work was to do with geo hazards and things of that nature. Not necessarily the geotech engineering side of things where, you know, using engineered materials for supporting excavations and things of that nature. So, yeah. So that's sort of where I'm at, as far as --

Isaac Oakeson: I got a couple questions regarding that. So does the FE help you get the P. Eng? Because my understanding to get the P. Eng is that you're getting work experience under another P. Eng, right? And developing a portfolio of work.

Andrew Jackson: Yeah, absolutely. There's an interesting sort of a bridge program that's been put together by the engineering association in British Columbia where you -- For myself, I acquired what's called it a Limited Engineering License. So it allowed me to practice some aspects of the engineering. You know, certify things under my own envelope as an engineer. So what they've come out with -- It's a fairly recent. Past few years they came up with this program that said, "Well, if you've been an engineering licensee for," I think, "eight years, or" -- No, four years, I think. Four or five years, whatever it is. And then you're looking to expand into a P. Eng, for whatever reason, they just sort of saw that these exams were kind of already put together and available. The testing procedures were all in place.

Andrew Jackson: So the associates said, "Well, you know, here's these two engineering, the FE and the PE exams, which do cover essentially what you need to have in place as an engineering degree and experience somewhat equivalent. So they've said, you know, "You can take these two exams, provide a bit more supporting documentation, and then that would allow for acceptance as a P. Eng" in my particular case, which is not all that typical to be fair.

Isaac Oakeson: Well, that worked out well for you. I was excited that, you know, being from Canada, you were able to take this and help you get that P. Eng in the long run. So that's an interesting fact I had no clue about.

Andrew Jackson: Yeah. No, it's quite unusual. But it's great. I think it's -- You know, initially, it was, "Well, do I try to go back to university and do an entire engineering degree to become an engineer or is there some other facilitation that allows for that?" And this was put together, which has been fantastic for me to be able to undertake.

Isaac Oakeson: That's fantastic. So if anyone is in Canada and you didn't know this, there you go. You know, go get your FE going. Well, why don't we dive a little bit into -- How did you find us? How did you find Civil Engineering Academy and our course, The Ultimate Civil FE Review Course?

Andrew Jackson: To be honest, Isaac, I just went snooping around on the internet, and I kind of found a few different courses. And yeah. I mean, you know, I think I watched a few of the sort of introductory videos you had, and I thought, "You know, this sounds like these guys are energized to help somebody pass." This kind of thing. So, that was pretty much it. Yeah, just kind of looking through the website and sort of saying, "You know, so we need a couple hundred bucks to get in for the one-month trial initially." And I did end up signing up for a couple months worth of your course.

Andrew Jackson: Yeah. I pretty much went through the entire course in the matter of two months, which was a decent amount of --

Isaac Oakeson: Aggressive.

Andrew Jackson: Yeah. So I did spend, you know, several hours a day or, you know, at least an hour or two in the evenings going through it. For others, you know, it might be a bit more of a [inaudible] to work through it. And you know, you may even want to run through the thing twice, you know? So, I probably could have as well, because it's a lot of information,

Isaac Oakeson: It's a lot of information. So I have a couple questions for you. What would you recommend for study time for someone in a similar boat as you, where you've kind of got this work history, you're familiar with some of the subjects? And then, I guess to tack onto that, is how did you tackle subjects you weren't familiar with knowing you didn't have an engineering degree, that maybe it didn't cover all the topics that may be found on the exam?

Andrew Jackson: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, to be honest with you, I did sign up for this exam about a year ago, so I knew it was coming. And I essentially sort of started plugging away at just kind of pulling whatever YouTube videos I could watch. I ordered a couple different practice exams. You know, getting into some of these, even just basic, kind of math videos and stuff, just to kind of help refresh me on a lot of the math and calculus stuff I haven't seen for years, decades even. So that was, to be honest, a lead up of at least six months before I even got into your course.

Andrew Jackson: So, I did spend that background time for myself trying to get up to speed with a lot of the stuff that, you know, [inaudible] would probably have experience with, you know, more recently from school.

Andrew Jackson: But yeah, somebody like myself, I think it definitely takes a lot of run up to really get up to speed. And even just to get into the course that you have offered, I wouldn't really even suggest just kind of jumping into it cold, you know, if you haven't really refreshed yourself on a lot of that information. So yeah. I don't know if that answered your question fully, but --

Isaac Oakeson: No, it does. It's helpful for people to understand. Like, I'm glad to say you had a little bit of a ramp up, because I think the longer you've been out of school, maybe the longer that ramp up should be. And then hopefully the course kind of just helped put icing on the cake to really get you into gear to pass it as you got there.

Andrew Jackson: Yeah, absolutely. You know, a lot of the stuff, like the structural engineering and the transportation stuff, I'd never seen before. I did really well on the geotech side, and the fluid mechanics and hydrology parts, you know? So that was definitely a good refresher as well. But I found that a lot more sort of, you know, at the tip of my tongue where I could just have it ready to go when I was doing those problems.

Andrew Jackson: But, yeah. A lot of new stuff. Like I said, the structural and the economics, engineering economics stuff, I've never seen. I struggled with that to be fair. It's not something that I had much exposure with. And I know, you know, on the exam, I definitely, you know, didn't crush those.

Isaac Oakeson: Well, you got enough.

Andrew Jackson: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things to really, you know, figure out is that, if you know three quarters of the stuff really well, probably don't stress you out on the other quarter and waste a bunch of time trying to learn things that you may never really use. Or just stressing out too much if you're focusing on those things that you have experience with already and you can build on that, and you can develop those. And then, you know, having some good exam strategy approach is basically how I did it. Like, that's how I was able to, I think, get through it because of that.

Isaac Oakeson: That's great. Good advice. I like it. AJ, could you name something that you really enjoyed about The Ultimate Civil FE Review Course as you took it?

Andrew Jackson: Yeah. I mean, you know, the videos. Like, there's just a vast amount of videos of the problems. You know, being able to watch the process and have those at hand, be able to go back and re-watch them. And yeah, just the presentation was very, you know, sort of absorbable. You know, for me. And, yeah. I thought it was great from that kind of perspective. So, yeah. I mean, it's a good course for helping just, you know, get that information available for the individual to work through and to absorb. Yeah.

Isaac Oakeson: I like it. Was there any obstacles that almost prevented you from checking out or buying the course? Did you have any obstacles in your way?

Andrew Jackson: I wouldn't say so. No. I mean, it was a reasonable price for me in that respect, you know? And I did consider signing up for the three-month versus the one-month. And then I was like, "Well, I think I'm probably just gonna only need maybe two months of it." So then I just ended up doing the two months. You know, probably paid more of a premium to do it. But that's sort of -- You know, it worked out for me. I think for others --

Andrew Jackson: You know, I was on the fence. I probably could have done the three-month purchase, and that would've been a better deal, like if I wasn't do it the three months. But like I said, I really didn't start ramping up my efforts for a couple hours a night studying until about that two-month mark. And that's when I was like, "Geez, I'd better get this going." So that's what I ended up doing.

Isaac Oakeson: Yeah. The course comes with lectures. We provide a lot of practice problems for people, making sure they're getting lots of exposure. A couple practice exams as well to make sure you test yourself well in advance, including a CBT exam. So, all that stuff's there. And then, support. We try to support you as best as we can. Really through email, or through our team, or private communities. So all that's kind of there for you. So, I'm glad you're able to take advantage of that.

Andrew Jackson: Yeah, absolutely.

Isaac Oakeson: Is there something about the CBT exam, so the computer-based testing exam, that you wish you would've known when you come in to take it? Was there any surprises?

Andrew Jackson: You know, yeah. Truthfully, I watched one of your more recent videos about, you know, prepping for the exam. And it was beneficial because I had just found out in one of those videos that, "Oh, this is a two-step exam." So you write that first 55 questions, and then you don't have a chance to go back and do those. I didn't really understand that before.

Andrew Jackson: So that was quite, you know, revealing that, "Yeah, I better strategize and make sure I hammer these 55 off, go back, do what I can, and then just those are gone. Now, have a break, have a sandwich, get a chug back a lion's mane filled coffee and, try and get squared up for the next half." So, yeah. That was definitely, you know, one of the things that I learned, you know, fairly recently before I did the exam.

Andrew Jackson: And, yeah. Otherwise, I've never really done a computer exam. I think maybe like a driver's license update thing at one point, but that's not the same thing. Oh, no. I did like my private boat license thing a few years ago, too. That was on the computer. But that's, you know, you just sit there and, you know, you're drinking a beer and you're just like, "whatever, it's fine."

Andrew Jackson: This was intense. It was, like, you go into the testing facility. It feels like you're like walking to some sort of like correctional facility or something. There's, you know, "under your pockets" and "scan your palm" and, you know, "put your stuff in the locker," "lock up your cell phone." And then go in and again another check. And then, "turn around." And it's like, you go into the room and headphones on. And everybody's like [inaudible ]. And now there's somebody watching behind the thing, and you say, "Oh my God!" It's pretty intense. Yeah. So, I mean, be ready for that.

Andrew Jackson: The day before I went on to the testing facility's website. It gives you a bit of a walkthrough. So I was like, "Okay, I'm not gonna be really blindsided by this because I sort of know what to expect. But even when you show up, it's like really, "Wow, this is heavy," you know?

Andrew Jackson: And really, no matter how much I practice going through on my computer, like searching things -- Like, the setup is all different. It's like the two screens. So you've got your searching is sort of smaller and you're kind of like, "Do I like scroll across the little arrow to try and get a bigger search thing?"

Andrew Jackson: So I think really -- Yeah. Like, the more time you have to go digging for things in that FE manual, the worse off you're gonna be. Like, you really just need to know where stuff is, you know? And again, if it's not completely evident on the question of how to do the question, I was like, "I gotta go look this up" and just straight onto the next one. You might have a chance to get back to it later. I mean, to be honest, I didn't finish. I think I maybe got 85 questions done, I figure.. And the rest, I just didn't have time to do.

Isaac Oakeson: Well, good job. Maybe you guessed right on some of those.

Andrew Jackson: I mean, I must have had some guesses that were right on the ones that I was just kind of, you know, shooting numbers at. And the other ones was I feel like I did -- Yeah, I did have a decent amount of problems that I was like, "Yeah, this is done. I know this." Like, super confident. Others, yeah. I mean, they had some other questions where you're now you're like shifting the little windows to like line up things. I had one on retaining walls I was like, "Oh yeah, I know this one." That was great. So, you know, know you're retaining wall types, I'll say for some. Like, that was was definitely one that I was like, "Oh, thank you. That's a gimme."

Andrew Jackson: But some of the other ones like these bending moment things where it's like, look at all these four different five different things and what's the actual, you know, envelope of these moments. And you're kind of like, Oh my God, this is [inaudible]. But then you kind of go through and you're like, "Well, if this is that, then this can't be that one." And then you're looking at the different, like, geometries and like, "Well, I think it's that one. That one looks good." So, there was a couple like that. And then, I think there was only maybe two or three that were like, "You have to analyze this whole thing and like just plug in your number."

Isaac Oakeson: Fill in the blank. So, a lot of people are worried about these alternative-item type questions. And it sounds like you had a few of them. And the other one people are worried about are theory questions. So, you know, getting prepared for those. So it sounds like you had some exposure to both of those on your exam.

Andrew Jackson: Yes. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. They were definitely those, like -- I'm trying to remember how many actual theory ones. Because they obviously have like the -- You know, the ethical ones are all sort of theory-based as well. So, you know, when you put those in with some of the other ones, like, maybe there was 20, I guess, 20 questions-ish around that of that type.

Isaac Oakeson: Which is quite a few.

Andrew Jackson: Yeah. Yeah. It was a fair amount. I mean there was a couple, actually, where I think I was just kind of like, "Well, what is this even mean?" And then I went into the manual, it was like [inaudible], and I was like, "Oh, it's right there." It's just written right there. So, being able to search effectively, too, can have its benefits to give you that answer right off the bat.

Isaac Oakeson: Love it. Well, we love to ask this question. But what's one of the main reasons why you would recommend The Ultimate Civil FE Review Course to someone else that's starting this journey?

Andrew Jackson: Well, geez. I mean, you know, trying to do this just on your own out of a book, unless you're, a genius or your, uh, you know, like I say, unless you're very, very, you know, sort of familiar with all of this kind of stuff, then I definitely recommend it. Like, it's so helpful. I wouldn't have been able to do it, like, just doing the practice problems on my own. No. You know, maybe going back to school or something. But like I said, I don't have the time. You know, I've got three kids. I got, I got a full-time work, I'm part owner in the business. So, yeah. It's so much.

Andrew Jackson: You know, and basically just lectures online -- I mean, there's a couple videos out there online for different guys that do sort of FE problems and that. But the depths and breaths really wasn't covered in the same way. And sort of, you know, just at your fingertips. Like, really being able to going back and look at stuff, and it's all in one place. So, it's definitely -- You know, I recommend it for anybody that's, like I say, not very, very familiar with those types of problems.

Isaac Oakeson: Love it. Well, AJ, this has been fun to do with you. Is there any last second tips you'd give to anyone else preparing for this thing? And it sounds like what's next for you is getting that P. Eng over there in Canada, which I am excited for you to get. So, any last study tips for anybody?

Andrew Jackson: Yeah. Boys, I mean, yeah. It just takes that sort of, you know, build up dedication of day after day. You know, just plugging away at stuff until you can really be comfortable with things. And like, I'm gonna be ramping up to take that PE exam.

Isaac Oakeson: You're gonna do that too?

Andrew Jackson: I've gotta do that as well. Yeah. So that's my next challenge. So I'm taking off about a month just to have a relaxing period. And then I'll be back. I'll probably do a similar thing where I, you know, start to do some practicing on my own, and then I'm be sure to join in to your group probably within about three months of when I write. And I'm planning on probably December. So, yeah.

Andrew Jackson: You know, what I'd say to people, you know, is just give yourself enough time. Like, especially for all those working out there with kids and houses and wives and all the rest of it. There's so much going on every day that you can't overdo it.

Andrew Jackson: I mean, until thee last week. And then really, you know, put in your time. I took off like a week of work before I did my exam. And I just like hid in my office and just was like eight hours a day. I did a couple practice exams. So, you know, the week before the exam, you know, for me anyways, it worked to just really go full out and just focus on that alone. You know, put your cell phone off, don't look at Bitcoin. Just do it, right? That's what you gotta do. You gotta commit to it.

Andrew Jackson: I mean, it worked for me, man. I was very pleased that I was able to get through it, and it's given me a good amount of momentum to get this next thing done and keep on with it. So it's good.

Isaac Oakeson: Awesome, man. Well, we're thankful that you've been a member of our course. Definitely go check us out at civilfereviewcourse.com. You can also check us out at our main site, civilengineeringacademy.com.

Isaac Oakeson: AJ, thanks for doing this with us. I appreciate you jumping on and sharing your thoughts about the FE and your journey with our course. Thanks for doing this.

Andrew Jackson: Absolutely.

Isaac Oakeson: All right. See you!