Ok, I've been having this recurring dream.

I've had it eight times in the last month, and I've woken up in a cold sweat each time.

Forget the 'you're at school naked' dream.

Forget the 'being chased through woods by scary shadowy folks' dream.

This is the worst.

And do you know what it's about? This is how tragic my life is. It's about the NCE!

The NCE is the exam trainee journalists take to become fully qualified (yep, that's right, we do have qualifications!). It's taken twice a year and if you pass you get a nice hefty pay rise. Except it's very difficult to pass. The pass rate is around about 40 per cent, and first timers rarely pass all three papers (four if you count your cuttings folder you have to produce).

So I sat the NCE for the first time about five weeks ago. It's hard to tell how it went, but I got through the day unscathed at least.

But since then I've been having this dream.

I'm handing in the final printout for the last paper of the day. I'm grousing about how long it takes to get the results through (more than two months) when the invigilator lady says to me: 'If you want I can tell you how you did'.

So of course I'm agog. She tells me I've failed two. I'm wailing by this point - how can she know this, she hasn't even had time to look at my papers!

She tells me I've failed them because my computer was emitting carbon monoxide poisoning and I didn't do the correct safety checks before I started work. She gave me the benefit of the doubt the third time because I was fiddling with the disk drive at the start of the exam.

I know. It's an insight into a scary psyche. But what can you do? I guess after eight replays this is just going to keep going until the results come out next month!

As for the actual NCE, it was ok I think, but it's a completely unknown quantity and as such really difficult to tell. I feel I did the best I could anyway!

I can't get over how horrible the day was. Even if I don't pass it first time I'm really hoping that I'll have passed one or two of the papers so I don't have to go through a day as horrible as that ever again! The printers weren't working properly (although no carbon monoxide issues that I could tell!) so our first exam finished at 10.30 but it took until ten to 11 to finish printing and then the speech was at 11. We finished that at 12.30 and then the interviews started at 1pm. I was so hyper when it was over but also knackered.

In stereotypical journo fashion I went out for a drink at half four, drank three large glasses of red wine in about an hour and a half and I was at home passed out asleep on the sofa by 8.30pm -- not the classy celebrations I had in mind!

As for the actual exams: Newspaper practice - the law question was good but the two 'how would you do this story' weren't particularly exciting to do. One was a guy raising money for the local hospice who'd been injured in a coastal walk and the question was how you'd write a story for the deadline two hours hence. The other was a healthy eating in schools thing about features you'd do. Neither of them were hugely difficult, but it wasn't as easy to come up with exciting stuff as it usually is, so I'm hoping that I put enough in.

Speech was fine although quite boring - town people protesting against a new wind farm. Lots of great words for the shorthand - turbines, hydroelectric etc, but the general gist of it was ok, and I think my quotes were alright. I overwrote (surprise surprise - I always do!) so I'll lose a mark for that - plus I hacked out a lot of details at the end which I might come to regret because I'm sure some of it was important but you lose a mark for every 10 words you overwrite so I was chopping stuff out like crazy by the end.

The one I think I probably did cack up was interview. It was an RSPCA inspector talking about a load of puppies being strangled and dumped. I got loads of emotive stuff, and lots of things that other people didn't but stupidly I forgot to put the road name of the RSPCA HQ, I put RSPCA in the intro (which the more I think about it the more I think the NCTJ would hate - instead I should have written 'animal welfare officers' and mentioned the police) and I missed summat huge in the interview. The guy talked about how a bag of dead puppies were found by a shopkeeper after he saw a man behaving suspiciously outside. I asked about the bag, the puppies, what they died of etc etc, but didn't go back to asking about the man. Turns out if you did he got a vague description and the fact he was driving a red car. I'm fairly sure missing that will be a fail... Dammit!

The thing is I sat the paper a while ago now, but it's still another month before the results come through. It's just scary. Here's hoping I don't have too many recurring nightmares between now and then!