From: niallr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed Oct 11 2000 - 00:41:37 GMT-3
Last Thursday in RTP on my fifth attempt I earned my number.
I passed the written exam in June '99 with an unimpressive 74%.
The first attempt was October '99 in RTP. I crashed and burned on
day 1. Awe and general unpreparedness killed me. Left RTP wondering what
I had been thinking. My preparation had consisted of my 3 router home
lab, lots of cisco installs at work, and reading Caslow/Doyle/Halabi. I
had the basics under control but I didn't have the speed.
Second attempt was March '00 in RTP. Made it to day 2 but not
troubleshooting. Had some stuff for which I wasn't ready. Still, it was
failure to triplecheck my work that killed me. I had made some changes
late on day 1 and didn't verify that everything else was still ok. It
wasn't and I lost more points than I should have. My preparation this
time included a couple more routers in the home lab and a lot more time
configuring things and much less time reading. I had speed and breadth
of knowledge but not enough discipline.
Third attempt was June '00 in RTP. Debacle is the only adequate
word. My CD never worked. I had a substitute proctor who was singularly
unhelpful in resolving the problem. And the exam was poorly written,
unlike the first two which I felt to be entirely fair. Perhaps I should
have been less concerned with syntactical subtleties and configured what
they wanted instead of what was requested. Left RTP a bit disappointed
and frustrated. My preparation was very similar to that for attempt # 2.
Fourth attempt was August '00 in Halifax. So close yet so far away.
Again I didn't triplecheck things after making changes and it cost me to
the point that I didn't continue on to troubleshooting. I was
overconfident and thought I had nailed this one, failing to note some
subtle twists to a couple of things. This time preparation consisted of
a large ATM implementation and numerous smaller installs at work with
less time on the home lab. My wife would probably disagree, but I didn't
spend very much time reading for this attempt.
Fifth attempt was October 4/5 in RTP. Managed to finish day 1 work
pretty early and review my work. Poked around on the CD trying to figure
out a way to implement something that just didn't seem to want to work
right. Nearly killed my chance by making a simple cut and paste error on
an access list on day 1 that cost me a nice chunk of cushion. Made up
for it with a very clean day 2! At this point I had the privilege of
walking around Cisco's campus for an hour and a half while Alan set up
troubleshooting. I think that may have been the toughest part of the
test. If the pressure wasn't intense enough just being on my fifth
attempt and wondering how I would tell my wife if it didn't work out, it
was doubled as I imagined all the horrors lurking in the rack waiting to
deny me my goal. Fortunately I never had to figure out how to tell her
:-)
When Alan asked me if I had a CCO account I could physically feel
the pressure lifting. And when he handed me the much-coveted sticky note
it took a lot of restraint not to hoot and holler. All the way down I-40
I kept waiting to wake up and discover that it was only Wednesday
morning and I hadn't done a thing yet. Now I'm hoping to rediscover my
family and find out what I used to do before starting down the road to
CCIE.
The things that I feel made the difference for me in this last
attempt might seem a bit counter-intuitive. I actually spent less time
on my home lab, just enough to remain sharp on the non-IP material while
I kept my IP skills honed at work. I felt much less stressed and found
that I was retaining material better. The harder and faster I tried to
cram knowledge in, it seemed, the more got pushed out. By breaking up my
studying with painting the house (a logical follow-up to the replacement
of wood siding which was my diversion while prepping for the CCIE Design
written exam) I maintained a sense of balance/calm that I lacked in my
earlier attempts. Until I was waiting for troubleshooting I didn't feel
anywhere as nervous as I had before and my consumption of Rolaids was
greatly reduced :-)
Some notes and observations:
DON'T EAT THE FREE LUNCH! I'm pretty sure that just nibbling on an
apple and picking at a salad had a favorable effect on my performance. I
was still wired in the afternoons instead of comfortable and sluggish.
I didn't take any prep courses or use any online labs. I gave
serious consideration to getting the Bootcamp labs but relied instead on
making sure that I could configure each of the things I had missed in my
previous attempts without resorting to the CD.
The following bears repeating: Read the posts to the groupstudy
lists and try to figure out answers on your own. Read the posts to the
groupstudy lists and try to figure out answers on your own. Read the
posts to the groupstudy lists and try to figure out answers on your own.
Much deserved thanks first to my wife and kids for putting up with big
electric bills and little quality time. Thanks to some of the folks at
SBC Datacomm for constant encouragement and professional challenges.
Thanks to Bert Kellerman for swapping lab dates with me (See I didn't
waste the opportunity man!). Thanks to Paul B. for the time and effort
of maintaining this list. And thanks to everyone else I am negligent in
not mentioning already :-)
Neil Rosenthal
CCIE #6274
-- Some of my best information on tuning EIGRP came from colleagues, both native and US military, in the former Yugoslavia. They pointed out how to tune around error rates caused by gunfire hitting the telephone lines.- Howard Berkowitz on Groupstudy 3/13/2000
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