Right, now I've got a chance to sit down I'll say what I thought about the exam.
Personally, I thought it went badly. Not necessarily because the questions were bad (there were some stinkers, but some nice ones too), I just couldn't focus, I feel that my writing lacked flair and focus, definitely didn't feel Level 3. I did a lot of research beforehand, but there were no opportunities to insert any of the extra stuff I found out, and I kept writing a lot about one point and then realising I was running out of space and time so rushing the rest. Bleeeeh
The first question seemed OK. For the human side I spoke about the congestion affecting peoples lives eg. making them late to work, and the fact that the state of the current bridge means people don't want to cross it, so Hamworthy becomes isolated from Poole, the local economies suffer etc. the physical side was more difficult in my opinion, I mentioned that congestion causes pollution which could have a knock on effect on people's health and noise from congestion could affect the birds... apart from that not much else. I hope they weren't expecting equal amounts of each.
The fieldwork question was good I guess, I was expecting it, however I wish it would have been worth more marks as I had a lot I wanted to write but couldn't.
For the data presentation question, I said choropleth for pop density, and stacked bar chart for the housing tenure, and expanded on these points, not much else to say really. The next question I spoke about how you can make assumptions about some factors eg. areas with higher pop density may be terraced inner city housing which is cheaper and poor quality, so maybe the people are poorer... for the housing tenure and employment I kind of said the same about how you can make assumptions from the proportions of people in each category, seemed pretty obvious though.
The 12 marker should have been a good question, but I'd lost focus by that point and it was all over the place... I really should have done better. I can't really remember what I put, it was just really obvious stuff like how the redevelopment will provide lots of jobs in the short term and long term, it will attract investors and have a ripple effect, it will give children motivation to do well (wtf was I going on about here?)... but it all felt a bit general like you could relate it to anywhere and it just didn't feel like a high level answer.
The last question was pretty painful too... I spent the whole first page rehashing what was written in the AIB basically, prattling on about how the birds are so important and rare despite the fact that I kind of agreed with the engineer, but I couldn't think of any major problems that would occur if they were gone... I mean it's a shame for any animal to go extinct, but the effect on people would probably be minimal, no? Then I wrote some bull**** about how if the birds are gone it could affect tourism (birdwatchers) and damage the heritage of the area... idk. I did mention that some of the constraints would prevent effects stretching beyond the birds ie. contamination could be dangerous to people as well, but I don't know if that will score me marks.
So overall I'm feeling pretty bad about it, but I guess if everyone found it hard maybe the grade boundaries will be low? What are they normally like for these papers anyway?