From: Darby Weaver (darbyweaver@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon May 14 2007 - 17:14:30 ART
Ian,
How have you been? How's the new job?
:)
--- 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
> >
> >
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Jun 01 2007 - 06:55:21 ART