During our briefings in almost every airline, we talk about threats. A big mistake that people make, however, is talking about all the threats but not what we can do about those threats. For example, a pilot might say during an approach briefing, "It's windy. Great, but what are we going to do about this? The mitigation is much more important than the threat itself.
Click here to see some mitigations against windy conditions.
We can take the same approach to ATPLs. There are lots of 'threats' when studying, and if we can identify these threats, we can effectively mitigate against them.
Have you found ATPLs easier or harder than you first thought?
Harder
Easier
About as hard as you expected
Not getting a head start
Look, we know this isn't much help if you're already well into your ATPLs, but for those of you who have not yet started, starting your preparation in advance will be very helpful.
The question is, how do you study something you haven't started studying yet? The answer:
Youtube
Books
Question banks
Basically, in exactly the same ways that you will be studying once you start! Get into the question banks early; get some exposure.
Not studying efficiently
Picture this: you're sitting at your dining room table. You do 100 questions and get 95 of them right—95%. Some would say congrats; as a tutor, I would say that you've wasted 95% of your time. If that test took you an hour, you wasted 95% of that hour.
You need to study what you're getting wrong, not what you're getting right. Focus on your worst areas, the areas that are giving you trouble. Start with the bank on those areas, and then when you find an idea that hasn't quite sat right in your mind yet, selve deeper into that idea. Do this be using:
Private tuition
Youtube
Generic web searches
Talking to friends
Text books (diagram sin text books are often incredible)
Not using question banks correctly
Please, please, please don't just power through all 1500 questions in a subject all in one go. Break the subject down. Spend time understanding concepts.
If you understand a question, there's no need to waste your time doing that question again; leave it unflagged. Flag questions that you do want to see again. Once you've got through the subject, you'll be left with a little custom bank that you have made yourself, just for you. Now re-do this bank, unflagging questions that you are now happy with. Do this until you are left with nothing or a few questions that you just can't quite get. Take these to your tutor.
A summary of the steps:
Do the bank topic by topic
Flag questions you want to see again
Leave questions that you're happy with unflagged
Once at the end of the subject, start again
Unflag questions if/when you're happy with them
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