From: David H. Brown (DHBrown@xxxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Wed Sep 20 2000 - 01:29:32 GMT-3
Today I was awarded CCIE # 6231 in RTP, NC!!!!
Since I don't have a web site to refer everyone to, I will post my story
here. Feel free to delete it... I have been looking forward to writing
this note, and I must have created 25 mental post-it's of things I wanted to
be sure to include. All of that memory was reclaimed and filled with IOS
commands, so now I'm going to have to wing it after all.
I started this adventure last October when I passed the written exam. I
then bought and read Caslow, Doyle and Hutnik, and I found this list and
joined in January -- clearly a good move. I found out how little I knew,
and how much more I have to (even still) learn. I bought a rack and filled
it with routers, an ISDN simulator and a phone line simulator. This was
beginning to be fun! I configured the rack with any scenario I could find.
I strongly recommend ccbootcamp.com, Marc's labs are an excellent
preparation tool for the real lab. I also used labs from fatkid.com, and
then any scenarios that popped on the list. Being with a Cisco partner, I
was able to have access to the ASET program, which was also a huge help.
After all of that preparation, I failed badly on my first attempt in March.
Feeling whooped by the ten-to-floor-ya lab, I avoided touching my rack for a
few weeks. My next attempt was set for June, so I figured I would start up
again a few weeks before then. Bad choice -- avoid waiting until the last
'few weeks' to study. Take a look at some of the posts of people looking to
trade dates to get more time -- I would venture to say some of them should
have not waited for the date to come so close to prepare for it. I went in
to the second attempt thinking I would see something close to what I saw the
first time, and I could just skate through no problem. Time to interject
that I have been certifying for quite some time. I passed the CNE in 1990,
I had been working with NetWare since 2.0a was the cat's meow. MCSE was not
a terrible challenge, nor was Citrix, Checkpoint was not hard -- I even
passed the CCNP and CCDP. The CCIE lab is nothing like any of those
certifications, and may it never be. With the other certs, there are study
mechanisms and a limited number of potential questions. Well, I suppose
there are a limited number of questions that can be asked on the lab, but
that number is much much higher than the pool of 150 questions that are on
the other tests. Needless to say, I was quite surprised to see a completely
different exam. I did well, making it to day 2 but not to troubleshooting.
I had scheduled to go again in September, and I apparently didn't learn from
previous experience NOT to wait around. See, I learned even more than how
to properly route and switch packets. I bought a bunch of Cisco Press
books, and read through most of them. I also read the Cisco Voice book by
Robert Caputo, it seems to have all the basics -- though nothing replaces
hands on. There was a problem with my new lab date, and I was able to move
up quite a bit and get in in August (thanks Christine!). That was only 2
weeks away!! I figured I could slam the routers full time nights and
weekends, like I did before, and I would be fine. Nope. Another completely
different test, with a twist I could not figure out (until I got back home).
I was again able to make day 2, but a few careless mistakes and I went home
again before troubleshooting. This was getting old. I realized I must be
worse than average, since the average pass was on the third attempt. In
reality, I was just not an expert yet -- since experts don't make careless
mistakes like I did.
This entire time, I was trying to balance having a life along with working
full time and studying for the exam. There were vacations to take and
church functions to prepare for and attend that would take much of my
non-working time. After reading other's posts about not having a life and
reading the "what will I do now that I passed" posts, I realized that there
is something more important than passing this exam. It's about priorities:
God, Family, THEN occupation. When you mess these up, life gets messed up.
Although I tried to get my priorities straight before my third attempt, I
was unable to because I felt the short time I had to prepare should be spent
completely on the routers. Ehhhnnnt, wrong. After the third failure, I
changed the priorities back to where they should have been right along. I
was blinded for months by the allure of gaining the medallion, forgetting
that all this will be gone someday, and that day could be any day for any
one of us. Oh, I did keep studying in every moment I could, but my attitude
was changing. It was not an overnight change, but a process that I am still
dealing with daily. When the children asked me to play a game with them, my
February answer was "don't bother me now." I did mellow that response after
a while to "I can't right now, but after June 17." For the last few weeks,
the answer became, "sure, let's play -- but you need to be in bed on time so
Daddy can get his studying done." Oh, that was much sweeter to them as well
as to me -- since I love to play games with my children. I came home
tonight to a small congratulatory reception, and we proceeded to play a
game. To me, that is the right way to be. This experience has been a
tremendous period of growth for me -- not just technically, since even the
exam is not just about knowing the IOS. It's about the pressure you are
under at any time, can you do it in this very limited amount of time? And
can you get it right the first time, because when you go over it with the
proctor, it's too late to fix it. Speaking of the proctors, I have seen
messages that have said bad things about the RTP proctor Alan Lanier. Could
it possibly be enjoyable to have a job where every day you have to tell 80%
(or more) of the candidates that enter the room that they have failed?? I
think not, after seeing his joyful demeanor while presenting me with the
coveted yellow sticky note. I think THAT is the fun part for him. After all
of my tests, I say that he was always fair -- although I really would have
enjoyed passing on my first attempt, it was not Alan's fault. I have only
my poor preparation to blame for my (yes MY) failures. Now I will be able
to reap the rewards of my successful completion of the lab exam. Lesson
learned: keep your priorities straight.
For this fourth and final attempt, I again had a completely different test
(they seem to have lots of different tests.) I was able to manage my time
well and complete the lab very early, leaving myself time to go over it to
find and fix anything I may have misinterpreted. I was ecstatic to reach
troubleshooting, quite sure that at least one of the other two that started
day two with me would make it before I would. Sadly, it was just me. The
last section is very stressful, but I was able to gather enough points to
reach the mark.
In the final part of my note (one of my mental post-it's came back to me), I
wanted to say thank you to the ones who helped me in some way to reach this
goal of mine. Some helped me technically, others were my non technical
support:
God
My wife and five children
Jay Thompson
Meredith Davison
Mark Martin
Christine Jeffrey
Lori C.
Ron P.
Angelo M.
Jomi S.
The DNE Team
Paul S. & family
Pat & Jeff
CCIElab@GroupStudy.com
David
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