From: Ian Blaney (ian.blaney@gmail.com)
Date: Mon May 14 2007 - 18:05:09 ART
You guys, who do not have any children, don't know how easy you have got
it!!!
During my studies I had 4 year twins plus a 6 month year old baby all
fighting for my attention (lets not even bring the wife into the equation)
Ian
On 5/14/07, Scott Morris <smorris@ipexpert.com> wrote:
>
> Congratulations on both your CCIE and your son!!! Now one is done, relax
> and go spend time with the other! You'll have those sleepless nights that
> used to be caused by the CCIE studies now going on for another reason!
>
> Well done!
>
>
> Scott Morris, CCIE4 (R&S/ISP-Dial/Security/Service Provider) #4713, JNCIE
> #153, CISSP, et al.
> CCSI/JNCI-M/JNCI-J
> IPexpert VP - Curriculum Development
> IPexpert Sr. Technical Instructor
> smorris@ipexpert.com
> http://www.ipexpert.com
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
> jk.ccie@gmail.com
> Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 3:28 PM
> To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
> Subject: CCIE #17837
>
> 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
>
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