From: Sean C. (Upp_and_Upp@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Aug 30 2006 - 22:25:40 ART
What a long, strange trip it's been....
I can't imagine the wait after requesting the re-read, but it was worth it!!
Congrats on the digits and thanks for the write-up,
Sean
----- Original Message -----
From: "D.H. Williams" <draythw@gmail.com>
To: <ccielab@groupstudy.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006 1:26 PM
Subject: Passed after Reread!
A excitingly strange day, today ...
A bit of background on myself and my situation. I sat for my 4th attempt in
July at RTP. On both my 3rd and 4th attempts I felt very comfortable,
finishing both those labs about 45 minutes after lunch, only to come home
and find that I had not passed. There are people reading this right now who
I know can completely relate. So, this last time, I decided what the heck,
and ordered a reread on my lab. That was over a month ago.
I'm not kidding, about an hour before my Mock lab today, I get an email from
Cisco stating that after the reread, I had in fact passed the lab. Please
understand, my score report was very, very close to passing to begin with,
and getting into whether or not you should do a reread has been discussed on
numerous occasions on this board. I don't want to waste more space here, so
anybody who has any questions about the reread and whether or not they
should do one, you guys have my email, please contact me off-board so as to
not fill up the board on discussion that is really dependent on your
individual situation. But, I have to admit, it is a bit surreal waking up
today to find that I do have my number.
The purpose of the email is to thank a few people as quickly as possible,
and get on. In no particular order (and I'm not paid or affilated in anyway
with companies below):
- NMC (Val, Bruce, and Bob): first instructors I had, everything before
them was self study (Cisco Press). These guys do give you a complete eye
opener to the nuances of the lab. And there labs are incredibly tough (and
I mean that in a good way). The tech library I would consider to be the
core of my study, and actually used it as my main reference once I was
comfortable with the DocCD and knew where things were located there. QoS
and Multicast sections really made the light bulb over my head explode on
occasions. Just a really good company that has been doing what they do for
awhile, and it shows.
- InternetworkExpert (Brians and Petr): very comprehensive, and well-though
out workbook. The way it builds upon itself is fantastic, and really worked
for me because of the structure approach. From a self-study perspective, it
honestly doesn't get much better than these guys. CoD is excellent as well,
I probably watched the whole two week recording 4 times. Helps fill in some
holes you might not know you had. And, as we all know, Petr does a
fantastic job answering questions on this board.
- IPExpert: I didn't know about these guys until late (I joined Groupstudy
only a few months ago), but after reading Scott's answers on this board and
how helpful he was, I opted to get the Audio series. It is really
excellent. I'm based out of Birmingham, and I opted to drive to RTP (about
7.5 hours) and listened to it the whole way there. I highly recommended
doing something like this a few days before the lab, and putting aside doing
any configs. Really helped me clear my head and sharpen up on a few misc.
topics.
One other person I would like to thank is Anthony Sequeira. I contacted him
after my last attempt when I was feeling very frustrated, and he gave me
excellent advice on how to pickup and keep going. I highly recommend
searching for his post of when he passed his lab, as he gives a good run
down of each attempt and what he did. Very good motiviation if you are
feeling frustrated.
That's about it; been just a really surreal day.
D.H.
CCIE#16790
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Sep 01 2006 - 15:41:59 ART