From: Pete Molaski (pete.molaski@gmail.com)
Date: Mon May 14 2007 - 17:13:20 ART
Great Job!
On 5/14/07, Ian Blaney <ian.blaney@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well Done Jay. Great story!!!!!
>
> Congratulations on both counts
>
> On 5/14/07, jk.ccie@gmail.com <jk.ccie@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > First time poster, long time reader...
> >
> > The past 2 weeks have been pretty crazy. I was scheduled to take my
> first
> > attempt at RTP on May 7. On May 2 my wife went into labor almost a
> month
> > early and threw a wrench into my final week "study and rest" plan (I'll
> be
> > grounding my son in a couple years for that one ;)
> >
> > My son (first one) was born healthy and my wife was kind enough to let
> me
> > get full nights sleep before I flew out for RTP on May 6. I slept great
> the
> > night before the lab and went in Monday morning actually feeling pretty
> > awake and ready. I got the lab, read through it, and knew I had a
> pretty
> > good shot at passing.
> >
> > By lunch (11:15) I was finished with everything but multicast (my arch
> > nemesis). I finished that up at noon and then had the rest of the day
> to
> > double and triple check everything. That was definitely a huge help b/c
> I
> > found numerous errors that would have cost me major points. In almost
> every
> > case, the mistakes were due to me misinterpreting the question. It's
> funny,
> > I was so intent and focused on reading the questions multiple times to
> make
> > sure I understood them yet I still made so many silly mistakes. I guess
> I
> > should have read them 4 times each <sigh>.
> >
> > After correcting my mistakes and then going over everything one final
> > time, I added up my points into four categories - Definite, Probably,
> Not
> > sure, Definitely Not. I left feeling pretty confident since I had 83
> points
> > in the "Definite" category, and only 3 points in the "Definitely
> Not". But
> > I've read countless posts from people who left thinking they nailed it
> only
> > to find out later they failed. So, I got back to the hotel and spent
> the
> > next 8 hours hitting refresh on my email until I finally got what I was
> > waiting for. And I must say I'm really glad I passed on the first
> > attempt. Studying with a newborn is more difficult than I anticipated
> ;)
> >
> > Every time I would read one of these emails my biggest question was "how
> > did they prepare" so here's my list of things that prepared me...
> >
> > 1. 10 years R & S experience. I'm sure you can pass this lab by
> spending
> > lots of time in a lab w/out real world experience, but I found my years
> of
> > working on Cisco equipment to be quite invaluable.
> >
> > 2. Really fast typing. I would say this is a much underrated
> > skill. I've always been pretty quick at typing, but I really put
> focused
> > effort during my studies to type out tasks as quickly as possible. This
> > certainly helped as I was able to finish the lab in just over 4 hours.
> >
> > 3. Lots and lots and lots of lab time. I was very fortunate that my
> work
> > purchased a full rack of routers / switches that allowed me to use
> vendor
> > workbooks. I had a 4 month stretch of downtime at work where I was able
> to
> > spend 4-5 hours a day studying. After that dry stretch ended I would
> still
> > study for an hour at work, and every night for 3-4 hours. This went on
> for
> > 8 months. All in all, I would estimate I spent close to 800 hours
> > studying...fun times ;)
> >
> > 4. Vendor workbooks. I used the big 3 to study for this - Internetwork
> > Expert, IPExpert, and NMC. All three get a big thanks from me. I can
> > honestly say that any of these would work well for you. Ineternetwork
> > Expert and NMC have *amazing* walk throughs (which make them well worth
> the
> > purchase) and they are investment protected which is huge. IPExpert's
> first
> > 20 labs are technology focused that were a huge help to me starting off,
> and
> > Scott was a huge help to me in answering all my questions (and freaking
> me
> > out w/ the difficulty in labs 39 and 40....dear God those sucked ;) As
> has
> > been said many many times before, all 3 have their strengths and
> > weaknesses. Do your research, download each of their freebie labs, and
> see
> > what fits you best.
> >
> > 5. Doc CD. This truly can't be stressed enough. With every practice
> lab
> > I did, anything I was stumped on I looked up on the CD. It was often
> > tempting to take shortcuts and use cisco.com, Google, or Doyle, but the
> > initial pains of navigating the CD paid off huge in the end. I got two
> 3
> > pointers on the lab that I had never attempted in any of my labs, yet I
> was
> > able to figure them out b/c of all the months I had spent on the Doc CD.
> >
> > The lab is definitely passable. Don't take shortcuts. When you go
> > through the labs, stop and research what you don't understand (this is
> > huge). When you take the actual lab the wording and physical layout
> will
> > look different than the practice labs, so make sure to truly understand
> the
> > technology.
> >
> > Best of luck to all
> >
> > Jay Killion, CCIE #17837
> >
> > _______________________________________________________________________
> > Subscription information may be found at:
> > http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> Subscription information may be found at:
> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
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