From: Victor Cappuccio (cvictor@protokolgroup.com)
Date: Thu Nov 10 2005 - 16:00:35 GMT-3
Amigo Javier,
I'm very happy with your certification; you deserve it, after all those long
study nights
Hugs my friend and keep on rocking!!
Your Friend.
Victor.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Javier Tomi" <fjtm@tid.es>
To: "Cisco certification" <ccielab@groupstudy.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 10:53 AM
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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