From: Chacko, Raj (RChacko@DRAFTNET.com)
Date: Thu Nov 10 2005 - 15:55:38 GMT-3
CONGRATULATIONS!!! What an awesome story!
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Javier Tomi
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 8:54 AM
To: Cisco certification
Subject: Yes, it is possible even on your first try...
Well, may be I am dreaming, but It seems to be true (have checked like a
hundred times at cisco web site)... I passed last Monday in Brussels
(CCIE#15333) and yes, it was my first time... :-)
It seems I were really near to Leigh and I did not notice. It is a pity
because it would have been really nice to have a beer with a GS fellow
after the exam. Anyway, this is my story...
Although my first time, it has not been an easy path. My written was 13
months ago, and since then I have been working hard to get prepared for
the exam. Like most of you I am employed and a bit overwhelmed at work,
and that leave not too much time to study.
Although my boss agreed to pay for the taxes of the exam, they did not
offered me any more aid. I therefore had to make a personal bet on this
certification... After persuading my wife, I bought a fairly complete
home lab (over 6000 ) from another CCIE and begun to study. I passed
almost every minute I could playing with the routers, working on
different layouts, technologies... I also spend tons of time going
through different books and documentation from cisco on the way from
home to the work and back at home, even on the bathroom... Of course no
real vacations at all nor free weekends but for study. Last year I do
not recall having slept more than 5 hours even on weekends. Well, in
fact all this stuff is something you already know as surely most of you
are living the same right now...
Several times I thought my wife will leave me. She had to carry on
everything, the house, my two little daughters (17 and 1 months),
everything... And she was really exhausted. But she did not give up, we
did not give up, and here we are.
Regarding the exam, I arrive Brussels on Sunday, being the exam next
Monday. Just a few hours taking a last view over my notes and I went to
bed at 10:30 pm. To my surprise I managed to sleep almost 8 hours. After
waking up, I took a shower, had breakfast, and went walking to the
Examination centre not far from my hotel.
We were over 10 taking the exam, although not all of us were for R&S.
Once on the examination room the proctor told us our rack numbers, gave
us brief instructions, and the exam begun.
Hardly 5 minute after the beginning of the exam several people was
typing crazily on the keyboard, which really made me really nervous. I
tried to manage it and continue with my careful reading of the whole
test. I made drawings for FR, IGP, BGP, and Multicast, But when I reach
QoS I could not help but to stop reading and begin working on Layer 2...
Over 35 minutes had passed.
At this point I found my first headache, ' the keyboard layout' was in
english and I did not know were to find anything. Of course this is
something I could have guess, but did not. I tried to change it but I
couldn't so It took me a while to get used to the new layout and to make
my quiet (I even had to ask the proctor where to find some keys...).
Over 45 minutes had passed and I have entered no command at all on the
routers but my alias. But then, the magic appeared. I begun to go task
by task fulfilling everything. Whenever I found something I was not sure
about my approach I made a note and passed to the next task. As the time
passed I was more confident with myself, and even though I was fairly
more error prone when entering commands because of the english layout of
the keyboard, I managed to complete almost all the exam (over 90 points)
before lunch.
At lunch time I had made all but the ISDN backup solution. I had also
checked full connectivity through TCL scripts and everything was fine. I
could not believe it. Life was beautiful...
After lunch, and much more quiet than at the beginning, I finished all
the pending points (including ISDN backup and skipped questions). I had
still almost four hours to go. I reloaded all my routers and repeated
the connectivity test for both backup and normal situation. All was
fine, so I begun to evaluate my situation in terms of fairly assured
points (88), probably correct answers (10) and probably incorrect
answers (2). But this was only my guess...
A second detailed pass through the exam question by question made me see
that I had made some little mistakes that could have made me fail.
Things as stupid as not disabling inv-arp in one of the FR interfaces,
the direction of a filter / policy-map...
Although some of the task are clearly enough and leave no doubt, The
wording of other task gave a wide margin for interpretation. Therefore I
begun to ask the proctor for every little detail subjected to
misinterpretation. That was really useful, as I found some mistakes on
my approach and some implicit requirements I had not considered during
my first pass through. In fact the Proctor is one of the best tools
available on the exam if you are able to make the questions in the
correct manner.
When my assured points where "more assured" I begun to work on the
"probably correct answers". As I still had 2 hours and no one was part
of the core I did not care about the value of each one or the chances of
getting the points. I just addressed them in order. The other 2 points
were something I did not manage to understand, so I left it untouched.
I spent the time left triple checking my answers in the DocCD.
I went out the exam as a happy man, being conscious that I had been
lucky with the exam, and that I had best chances to pass it.
Nevertheless, once in the airport I remembered all those stories I read
on GS and other forums regarding people who as me had done a good exam
but had failed anyway. The doubt begun to enter in my mind, and I spend
the another 2 hours reproducing the exam entirely (diagrams, questions,
points associated with each question...) while in the airport. I wanted
to be sure I will be able to complain in case a received a failed grade.
Once at home in Madrid, and although I tried, I couldn't slept that
night. My results arrived at 2:20 in the morning. I had passed...
I know I have been lucky, the exam was not too difficult, and everything
went ok. In any case, my personal opinion is that although knowledge is
a must to pass the exam, It is even more important the exam approach.
All that stuff about reading the exam carefully, preview where problems
can emerge, make IGP, BGP, Mcast diagrams to interiorize it all, skip
things you don't know or you are not able to configure at first sight
(but core topics) to do it at the end, be conscious of the value of each
task and the dependencies between them..... it really what makes the
difference.
I would like to thank you all for your help and support. It has been
really helpful following the different threads posted by lots of people.
Even from the simplest questions posted here I have learn a lot. A
special mention for Victor Cappuccio, which has been my study partner
during lasts weeks, and made me keep on the road whenever my
determination failed.
To the rest of you, I wish you all to be as lucky as me on your future
attempts. And remember, it is just an exam and therefore it is passable.
Best Regards
Javi
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