You are correct ctacker. Byron it is a hard test, no doubt about it. I studied for 2 months at least 1 hour a day and I took the seminar with AWS for 1 week, passed first time with a pretty good score. If you study you will pass is my opinion for what it's worth, the seminar is good but all they do for most of it is go over the book(s). If I had it to do again I would not take the seminar for the whole week, I would take the 1 day visual inspection workshop and then the test. A couple people I know did this and had no trouble, and if you do miss the test the first time then take the seminar. But everyone is different, I reccommend buying the books you get at the seminar before you go I bought the WIT text and workbook then I got a copy at the seminar so I had 2 copies which is a pain but I sold one set for 1/2 of what I paid for it. You can sell the books easily on the for sale section here or on Ebay either one. I got the sample test(s) from AWS also and took them. I would read the chapters, take the test and the ones I missed I made up flashcards to study with. This sounds a little childish but my wife is a nurse and that's what they did when she was going to school. I don't think I would have passed the test without them. I also wrote out answers I had trouble with 5 times each. Both of these methods really got the stuff into my head. After that when you go to work it's mostly a matter of being organized and thorough with your recordkeeping and so on. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if your not organized you will probably not be a very good inspector. Learn Excel and Word backwards and forwards because you will use them a lot. Pay attention to your senior inspectors most of them will teach you a lot, and network and you'll stay busy.