From: Messina, John V (john@crimsoncti.com)
Date: Sun Mar 14 2004 - 17:54:44 GMT-3
Nick, Like you and many before and after us, I too have failed several
times while maintaining a full time networking position and with a
family at home. While I don't agree with everything you outlined in your
post, I can certainly relate to how you are feeling right now.
What I am doing is taking all of my frustration and using that energy
towards preparing for my next attempt. What keeps me going in that
direction is the fact that it is a very difficult exam, and that if it
were easy it would be far less satisfying once I am successful. The
weak, easy, lazy way out is too criticize the process and minimize the
accomplishment. It takes strength to fail many times at something and
continue to remain positive and admit that perhaps you have more work to
do before you meet the requirements. I am not saying any of this is true
for or of you, just sharing my experience and outlook. I will not give
up for I have worked too hard at this already to not be successful. I am
sure you have as well and I hope to see you staying positive and
continuing to work towards your goal until you succeed.
John V. Messina
-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Guy [mailto:nickguy@semaphore.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2004 12:54 PM
To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: Failed again.
Hello,
I want to start by throwing out the caveat that I just failed my 5th
attempt at the lab. Just saying that makes me feel like a complete
idiot but it is time to start facing the fact that I am not able to nail
this exam easily. In my own defense I have to prepare for the lab on
top of being a Dad and husband and running a network department for a
small, sometimes struggling company. The caveat is there because I am
fully aware of the fact that I could be accused of being
a little bitter. I am in the state of shock one has after failing a lab
and still deciding if I care enough to try it again.
One thing I would strongly recommend against is spacing out attempts
too far. Anyway it has not worked for me.
Here are some of my opinions/beefs, for what they are worth good, bad
and ugly
The good,
It is fair to say that the effort put into my CCIE prep has widened my
knowledge to arenas that I do not encounter very
often in a Network Engineering/Manager job. In some circumstances that
additional knowledge has been useful for customers.
The proctors are awesome.
If I ever move to Mexico my knowledge of ISDN will be helpful... :-)
(sorry, could not resist)
The bad,
For $1250 air fare and prep costs I deserve more than the less than
thorough feedback I got. 15 minutes on the phone
with a proctor would be invaluable.
I think, and it is difficult to discuss this without violating NDA, it
is wrong to develop testing to trip people up on
obscure gotchas. It is lazy. Also, if Cisco is concerned about the
Microsoftization of the credential this is the kind
of stuff that will generate paper CCIE's
On a similar note, while I can buy into the notion that to some degree
creating networks that would never exist in the real
world might be a reasonable measure of a candidate's handle on minutiae
I fail to see how this prepares one for running and
or designing networks. I reminds me of taking a British driving test
after driving in the States for a while. I had to
learn to drive like an amateur.
The ugly:
I am beginning to feel ripped off.
When I pass the test I will ban myself from configuring GSR's. and
confine myself to making little lans and data link
switching people's netbios.
As a group I think it is important to us all to view and value the test
as an good measure of the kind of skills necessary
to configure Cisco's equipment for our customers. It is I feel
important though that as customers of what I am sure is
one of Cisco's higher margin departments, that we apply our critical
thinking skills to giving Cisco feedback about our
experiences. I have done this using the feedback form already but for
any of you that have used it, it feels about as
interactive as the Internet over cable.
It is my hope that I will lick my wounds and develop another strategy.
Wanted to post this while I am still pissed off.
Anyway that is my .02 please do not flame me too much.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Thu Apr 01 2004 - 08:15:22 GMT-3