knowledge test results coming back to haunt you

chris priest wrote in
:

Andrew Sarangan wrote:

As for skipping questions because you are confident of passing the
test, this too displays an attitude towards taking shortcuts. It
might be worthwhile for you to read about risk management.

I understand there are things you can risk, and then there are things
you just can't risk. When you are on final approach, you just *can
not* skip those final checklist items. On the flip side, when you are
doing a cross country, you *can* afford to skip writing down your time
en route between checkpoints in your flight log if you are preoccupied
with your VOR receiver failing. I felt like I could afford to skip
certain questions on my test and not have it negatively effect
(meaning fail) the test.

Risk management is all about *managing* risks, not avoiding any sort
of situation imaginable that may in some slight way have a negative
effect. There are tons of things experienced pilots do that could in
some way negatively effect safety of a flight, such as neglecting a
micrology while dealing with an emergency. These are unavoidable and
they happen all the time. The difference between a good pilot and a
bad one is that pilot's ability to deal with these situations, and
what they choose to omit, and not omit.

Risk management is about being aware of and assessing all risk elements and
taking the best course of action. Not studying hard enough, or being lazy
is not generally considered a risk element. If you don't have the time or
motivation to do your best on the written exam, you really need to
reconsider if aviation is going to work for you.