From: jean.paul.baaklini@accenture.com
Date: Sat Oct 16 2004 - 15:06:38 GMT-3
Well done Joe, Congratulations!!!!!!
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Joe Johnson
Sent: 16 October 2004 18:31
To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: Passed; #13899
Hello everyone,
Last Thursday I passed in Brussels on my 4th attempt. I know this
message
is a little late; I've been meaning to post it but kept finding other
things
I needed to do. I started this journey 2 years ago after finishing my
CCNP.
It took me a little longer than I would have liked but being a single
parent
and an active duty member of the US Air Force both take quite a bit of
my
time.
I started out re-reading Cisco Press books and labbing them up, and
after I
did that for a while I got the NMC workbook. After nearly finishing
that IE
released their workbook and after reading many good reviews of it I
decided
to purchase it. I was pleasantly surprised/humbled by the difficulty of
the
labs and slowly worked through about 60% of them before my 1st attempt.
I
was surprised when I failed that one and more surprised by my score
report.
Unfortunately shortly after that I got deployed to the Middle East for 3
months so I didn't have much time to study or research what I did wrong
or
much of anything during that time.
After I came back and got settled in I started to study again. My next
lab
date was right before 12.2T was going to be on the exam and they hadn't
announced IPv6 was excluded. I really wanted to get it this time so I
took
the IE online workshop which was a very good class. I passed each lab
so I
figured I wouldn't have a problem with the real one. Just to be sure I
took
the NMC CheckIt lab and got around a 70%. I thought I passed my 2nd
attempt
as well but sure enough didn't. I found a few mistakes I made but
didn't
think they justified my score. After that I scheduled my next lab about
a
month and 1 week later.
One mistake I made before my 3rd attempt was not taking any vacation
time to
study and of course I was really busy at work so I didn't get any study
time
there. I studied as much as I could but it wasn't much. It really hurt
when I failed that one because I was really close to passing and now
over
the "average" failure rate of 2 attempts. I again scheduled as soon as
I
could mainly because I knew I was really close.
To prepare for my 4th attempt first I re-read the DQoS cert guide and
bought
and read Cisco Firewall Security (well R&S applicable sections anyways).
After that I re-read the IE solutions guide for labs 1-7 and went over
my
notes a few times. A week before my lab date I did some of the later IE
labs for a comprehensive overview. After I finished the lab I though I
was
probably close but after thinking that my last 3 times I figured I
probably
failed again. When I got home (4 hours later) to my surprise there
wasn't
an E-Mail from Cisco saying my results were ready. The past 3 times I
had
that message waiting so I figured it might be good news. About 3 hours
and
5 beers later I got the E-Mail and saw pass; I was so excited. The next
day
when I woke up I had to re-check the website just to make sure.
To everyone out there still working on this beast of an exam all I can
say
is don't give up. Failure is tough and the more you get the worse it
is. I
knew I had to keep going because if I didn't I would loose all the time
and
money I put into it (even though my networking skills improved so much).
Also I'm getting out of the Air Force in about 5 months and I really
wanted
to pass before I got out. Now that I've passed it feels as if a huge
weight
has been lifted from me.
I'd like to thank the Brian's and NMC staff for delivering such great
products; they were instrumental in my success.
I would also like to thank Paul for running groupstudy. Where I'm at
there's no one else working on their CCIE so there's never any CCIE type
discussion around. Although I've only been a passive listener it's been
really great to know that I'm not the only one putting myself though
this
difficult process.
Good luck to everyone,
Joe
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Nov 06 2004 - 17:11:48 GMT-3