From: Tarek Sabry (tsabry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Tue Jun 04 2002 - 07:13:16 GMT-3
Hi
I feel like writing a lot, but I promise to be brief and easy on those
pieces of advice ;)
It all started back in June 2000 with my written exam. I failed my first lab
attempt the following January (2-day format), then I was totally unable to
follow through. I changed jobs, moved, changed jobs again, and finally 4
months ago decided to restart this process. It was tough because by that
time the CCIE was totally out of my system. I had to isolate myself from
everything and everyone because my only chance was to study during the
weekends or if I get to work one day a week from home. My employer fully
supported me. This helped. Also my 7 years of networking experience and 2
years of Cisco hands-on contributed a lot. I went for my final shot last
weekend and I passed.
My take:
----------
- The CCIE lab is much easier and makes much more sense if you have, at the
very least, 2 year of solid WAN hands-on experience. If you are not that
fortunate, I dare not tell you not to pursue the cert, but expect to do much
more effort and go through more frustrations while you make up for the lack
of hands-on. Lab rats are fine with me :)
- Try to allocate more study time for IGP and EGP because this is the core
of the Routing and Switching blueprint. Of course much easier if you are
already working with those technologies. All the other technologies are much
more manageable.
- Study partners. Nothing beats those technical discussions where each
person exchanges their findings and shares their experience.
- Rack time. If you don't have your own, make sure you have other
arrangements. Be very familiar with the command line.
- Text books and cert guides. Those are essential in the beginning, but you
should not need them that much in the final phases, otherwise you have
problems.
- Get interactive in posting to the newsgroups rather than just read the
posts all the time. Definitely more important if you don't have study
partners.
- Don't forget about staying healthy. Remember it's a full-day test. You do
need a good energy level when you get to the Cisco lab. In fact you also
need to maintain this energy throughout your studying. I didn't do very well
on that one because my sleep got messed up really badly. Luckily it didn'y
bite at me in my final attempt. (Thanks to Ash for this tip!).
- Maintain your motivation level and if you fail an attempt, get back on
track the next day if not the same day!
Acknowledgements
----------------
- Thanks to Paul Borghese for this study group. It rocks!
- Thanks to Paul Jin, Stan Zheng and Ash (from the UK). I learned a lot by
talking to you guys.
- Thanks to all those who took the time to write constructive advice for all
the CCIE-to-be's. Each little advice counted for me! Amazing how these
things got stuck in my head. Manny Gonzales' account of building a full
scenrio every day in the week before the test totally overpowered me. Yes,
all I could think of the day of the lab was "config t" also :)
- Thanks to Kris for those amazing last minute discusions the day before the
test. It was good finally meeting at the test location. Congrats for
passing! I'm really happy we both made it.
- Last but not least, thanks to my father for being the lead motivator for
me and for raising the bar for success and career achievements. I could have
never done it without you Dad.
Time to get a life ....
Good luck to all and make sure you enjoy every moment ...
Tarek
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Tue Jul 02 2002 - 08:12:22 GMT-3