From: Tim (ccie2be@nyc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Oct 07 2006 - 18:40:12 ART
Hey Alex,
I feel your pain.
It can be quite frustrating to go to the proctor with a question and not get
any useful response.
But, there's an art to getting useful help from the proctors. You have to
keep in mind that the proctors are there only to clear up ambiguities.
The exam is worded very carefully so as to not have any ambiguities but
invariably, someone can think of a way of interpreting a task which was not
what the authors had in mind. So, basically, it comes down to this:
If you don't understand what a task is telling you to do, you're out of
luck.
If you don't know which way to interpret a task because you see 2 or mores
ways the task can be understood, that's when the proctors can provide you
with valuable help.
I once had an instruction that was something like this:
X x Y + Z
As you can see, the results might be very different if I do the first part
first (X x Y) and then add the Z versus X x (Y+Z).
I went to the proctor and he looked up the answer and gave me a straight
answer.
As another example, I once had a task that talked about Home Agents and
Foreign Agents. So, I'm thinking, damn, I don't know Mobile IP that well.
But, that stuff about Home and Foreign Agents was just a red herring, a
distracter and the correct config didn't require any configuration of Mobile
IP. But, it wasn't until one day when I was doing some more practice labs
that I came across a problem like what I saw in the lab and then I finally
understood what that lab problem was really about.
In the above example, there's no question I could have the proctor which he
could answer and help me out. On that problem, I was totally missing the
boat. But, the proctors aren't allowed to tell you that. You have to have
enough knowledge and experience to understand what the task is telling you
to do. If you don't, the proctors can't help you.
My one other piece of advice is to know EACH WAY to do something. Remember,
for many things, there are often 2 or more ways to accomplish something. On
the lab, they'll often take away the way that most common. For example, in
OSPF, if there are 2 paths to a destination and you're told to make it so
that ospf prefers 1 path but you're not allowed to use the COST command, you
would simple just use the bandwidth command.
If you go through the GS archives, you'll find lots of posts on this very
topic.
Anyway, hang in there. It took me lots of attempts to finally pass the lab
but if I can do it...
Tim
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of Alex
De Gruiter (AU)
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 12:47 AM
To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: Proctor help?
Hey Guys,
I've read many, many times on this list people mentioning that the
"proctor is your friend" and if you need clarification the "proctor is
there to help". Well, I recently sat (and failed) the lab exam; I
evidently wasn't as ready for the lab as I thought I was - that's cool,
I know the areas I need to improve. However I do have a question along
the lines of proctor assistance - or lack thereof.
Literally every time I asked a question in my lab, I was told "Read the
question" (a rather redundant activity I thought, given that I was
referencing the question in my line of enquiry!). Now, I don't expect
the proctor to give the answer away, not at all, but I am confused by
comments about how helpful the proctor was. I actually reached a point
with my proctor where I gave up asking questions because I already knew
the answer: "read the question".
I can't give concrete examples due to the NDA, however I know for a fact
that there were at least 3 or 4 questions that could be answered using
more than 1 methodology. However the proctor told me, in no uncertain
terms, that he would not assist in my choice. Has anyone had similar
experiences with proctors? In these situations, are we marked down for
choosing a methodology other than the one Cisco expected us to use?
Alex
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