From: steveaggie@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 08 2008 - 14:19:58 ARST
Congrats Scott!
I loved reading the long story and seeing that not everything has to work
out perfectly for someone to pass. You once posted a question about what to
do with your final 40 days. I am now about 47 days away and I wonder if you
had to do the last 40 again what you would do differently (if anything).
Also, do you have any tips related to time management or any other lab
strategy?
Great job.
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Scott M Vermillion
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 3:34 PM
To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: Beat the 20k Mark in SJ on Tues!
Hi All,
Been having some strange e-mail issues that started out in San Jose and
apparently followed me home. I appear to have lost several sent messages,
including my original post to the group regarding my trip.
Short version follows, longer version follows that (if I can stomach wring
all of this again):
I have no idea why I set this as a goal for myself, but I did set it and I
did achieve it. I beat the 20k mark by less than 50!! New number is
#19953!!
Products used:
GROUP STUDY and its members!!!
Let's not forget that it's Paul that brings us all together here!
InternetworkExpert Vol I, II, & III
InternetworkExpert Advanced Technologies Class (CoD)
InternetworkExpert Online "Bootcamp" (marketing thing I think - I generally
thought of it as a "lab strategy" class, personally)
InternetworkExpert Graded Mock Labs (1-3)
Generally, the Brians and also their new blog
Thanks also be to Kady and Misty on the support staff
Narbik's bootcamp
Narbik's workbooks (all)
A massive collection of posts, musings, and humor from Scott Morris
Cisco Assessors (A & B)
Too many Cisco Press books to list but certainly all of the mainstays, such
as Doyle Vol I & II and Halabi, and lots of other less obvious choices for
the non-core stuff.
I chose InternetworkExpert largely based on advice from Joe Brunner and also
because the Brians seemed to be on the same wavelength as me regarding
Dynamips. They gave me some great suggestions as to how to put together a
good topology that would support their workbooks and so it was an easy
decision to make. I ultimately ran a Mac Mini as my Dynamips server and
bridged out my router ports to four new 3560-8PC switches (just not an e-bay
kind of guy). They were horribly expensive but I resolved to get 100% of
the switching points during each and every lab attempt as my return on
investment. I'll obviously never know if I attained that goal, but it's
pretty clear I came close enough.
I elected to attend Narbik's bootcamp after Rik Guyler planted the seed in
my head. I also couldn't help but notice how many people who ultimately
pass credit Narbik in their announcements. Narbik is a way cool guy and I
enjoyed our week in Pasadena immensely. Had some great classmates in Santi
and Chris Riling too.
I do recommend the Cisco Assessors and the IE Mock labs. Strongly. I can't
say I always agreed with the grading (never having passed a single one of
them), but I learned immensely from them in terms of getting a lab done and
looking out for pitfalls that tend to appear only when you're racing the
clock. Ever an issue for me. I literally - and I am not exaggerating one
bit - was typing in the final command for the final task when the proctor
came around and told us to write mem and take a hike. I had probably 25 or
30 points of stuff I needed to re-verify but never got the chance. Thus, my
three-mile walk back to the hotel was spent planning my next attempt.
Without those graded mock labs, I'm just sure I wouldn't have been
successful. As it was, I was on the edge in terms of time management, etc.
It's only coincidence that I have never used anything from IPExpert. While
I don't believe you can pass by buying everything on the market, I do like
to get a new perspective on things from time to time. And Scott Morris is a
first-class human being. I appreciate what he does for this list on an
almost a daily basis and I appreciate Scott as a friend. Thanks again for
showing me how to eat Japanese food out in San Jose!!
OK, this last part blends in some personal history, so feel free to tune out
at this point:
I started my own business several years ago and the early years were
fantastic. I made a very reasonable living and trips to Jackson Hole and
international vacations became part of my family's normal routine. Then
some things turned sour and I wasn't really working full time. Then my
wife, a corporate finance type, quit her job and was unemployed throughout
most of 2007. I decided to get out of the industry altogether and set about
trying to decide what I was going to do when I grew up. Well I guess after
18 years, I'm just not capable of anything else. Nothing I thought of
seemed to stick for very long. So by the 4th of July holiday here in the
States, it became obvious that I needed to get back to work. But not as a
regular employee. I'm ruined for that after being out on my own for so
long. So I resolved that if I was going to remain in IT, I was going to
climb the mountain. I ordered a pile of books and tore into written prep
probably around the second week of July.
Conventional wisdom held that the written was designed primarily to filter
out only the least likely candidates to pass the lab. Plenty of people told
me how easy it was and that it was basically a CCNP-level exam. I still
studied hard, but did not bother to incorporate lab time into my
preparation. Thus, I may very well be the first guy to have passed the lab
with a single attempt but not the written! LOL. I regrouped and passed on
my second attempt about a week-and-a-half later. Booked my Feb 5 lab date
the next morning and got busy.
I spent FOREVER working my way through Vol I. My routine was basically
this:
1. See what the topic of the technology lab was
2. Go read EVERY SINGLE word I could find on the topic in the DocCD
(supplement with books as needed)
3. Do the lab.
4. Break the lab
5. Play with the lab
6. Return to the DocCD as needed
I sometimes stretched a 20-minute lab into an all-day affair. I finally
moved on to the Vol II labs but was taking something on the order of four
days to complete one. Still returning to the DocCD constantly. Finally, I
got serious about working on speed. It was difficult, to say the least. I
did a few Vol III labs but that was it. I was getting close to my lab date
and I have to do some reverse and re-engineering of each lab to make it work
with my 9-port switch topology. I didn't want to waste any more time on
that so I shifted to rack rentals and graded mock labs. I'm here to tell
you that I lose about 30 points off my IQ the instant a clock starts
ticking. I do DUMB stuff that I would normally never do. The mock labs
helped to shake that out of my system. Having said that, I was planning my
second trip to San Jose before I even left on my first one. I literally
checked available dates before my flight. I knew the technologies but was
still just taking too damned long and not being able to verify my little
mistakes away. Towards the end, I gave up entirely on any of those "have X,
Y, & Z done by lunch" type of things and shifted back to more of a "build
and thoroughly verify" approach. This final adjustment was likely the one
that put me over the top.
In the final weeks, I made extensive use of the ATC CoD again and Narbik's
workbooks. He shows how things are configured and what the various outputs
will be. He occasionally shows common configuration errors and what the
result will be (and obviously what the correct approach is). It's very,
very useful as a late-phase review tool. As is the ATC, as again, you're
seeing the stuff being hammered out on the CLI as it's being discussed.
Very helpful indeed.
I also eliminated distractions, such as phone calls and e-mail (including
the list!). This too was critical. I seriously, seriously worked hard
those final weeks.
I flew to San Jose while many were watching the Super Bowl. I took Monday
off and, in an attempt to wear myself out, walked about 12 or 13 miles. I
walked from my hotel to Cisco and back just to scope things out. BTW, the
lab is in Bldg C and don't just show up asking where to go. The jackass
working the desk at Bldg A informed me that was "confidential" and he
couldn't and wouldn't tell me a thing. I asked for his business card so I
could complain. Then he poked around on his computer and told me to go to
Bldg L, which just happens to be the fitness center. I ultimately figured
it out by using my PDA to look up that "confidential" information on their
public website.
I did not sleep a wink the night prior to my lab. I walked back to Cisco
the next morning, having been awake for over 24 hours and physically very
exhausted. I was starting to fade while waiting in the lobby (showed up
about an hour early).
When I got in and read my workbook, it was on. Not the least bit tired and
totally focused. I KNEW I could do what that workbook was asking of me and
I got very excited that I was going to be a CCIE by the end of the day.
However, some tasks were deceptively time consuming and I began to lose my
battle with the clock. By lunch I was pretty worried and by 2:00 or 3:00, I
was fighting panic. But I learned from my mock labs and calmed myself down.
Panic = lost points. Panic = failure. So I stopped even looking at it and
just focused on completing and verifying tasks. Like I said, when 5:00
rolled around, I was wrapping up a task that I had put off 'till the last.
I actually think I nailed that one.
Mr. Morris just happened to be staying in the same hotel, so I joined him
for dinner thoroughly convinced I had failed. I didn't rule out passing,
but not having re-verified so many points worth of stuff, it didn't seem
likely. When I returned to my room and the message was there, I instantly
became ill. I didn't want to read a failure report after such a nice
dinner. But I was powerless to resist. So I followed the link. to CCIE
#19953! Yes, I'm still rechecking every day to ensure there wasn't some
kind of mix-up. Once, under "Status," I accidentally read it to say
"cancelled" vs. what it really said, which is "certified." Evidently it
should say "certifiable."
I had been advised to not be shy about asking questions of the proctors. I
wasn't. I demonstrated that I knew all the different ways to do a given
thing and discussed what some of the possible outcomes might be. They were
more than willing to clarify what they were after as long as they were
satisfied that my confusion was only what the actual task was looking for
vs. what might possibly be done to solve it. I never bothered to ask
anything designed to lead me to an answer I didn't know, which would have
been a waste of valuable time. I only asked how to interpret certain
ambiguities, explained why I thought it was ambiguous, and demonstrated how
I could solve it if I went down Path A and also how I would solve it if I
went down Path B. And I'm glad I did too, as I think on several occasions
it prevented me from choosing poorly. I am truly grateful to both proctors
for their patience with me. I thought maybe they might get sick of me but
never seemed to. I thought they might fail me for asking so many seemingly
silly questions but they obviously didn't. So my advice is plan your
questions carefully and ensure that what you are asking is something they'll
be willing to answer, which is pretty much limited to how to interpret
something that could reasonably be read in more than one way. I obviously
can't speak for any other testing center, but I can tell you that the San
Jose guys are not some disgruntled old hermits who hate CCIE candidates. I
sensed that they are deeply connected to us and are sympathetic to our
plight. It's an outrageously stressful ordeal and they seem to understand
that in normal life, you'd be a lot smarter than you sound while doing
battle with the beast. I was very pleasantly surprised in this regard and
now I'm certain I'll never test anywhere else. And yes Joe - the watermelon
juice was GOOOOOD!!! I'll credit 10 points to that stuff alone. LOL.
OK, that's it. I'll be hanging around the list and will consider SP
following a break and some much-needed work. The offers/opportunities are
already starting to roll in. It's an amazing thing, this CCIE stuff.
Cheers all and prosperous studies,
Scott
CCIE#19953
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