From: cciestudy (cciestudy@mid-world.net)
Date: Mon Jun 30 2008 - 11:22:57 ART
Congratulations!
This gives the rest of us hope that the summit is achievable.
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of Dale
Kling
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2008 5:53 AM
To: Cisco certification
Subject: Damn, I finished the lab in 4 hours and had 4 hours to verify and I
still didn't...........
get served that coffee Brian Dennis was talking about. At least I got my
number on my first attempt though, 21330 baby!
BTW, never ever ever take your lab on Friday, the wait was worse then the
night before christmas as a kid! I didn't get my results until I woke up
this morning and have been on edge with people all weekend.
Some people already know me from class and know my story. I began studying
because of all the paper CCNPs out there, especially my work. Now I have
nothing against CCNPs or any paper certs if you did it the right way, but
what pissed me off is that our employer thought this other guy was as
qualified as me because he got his CCNP and this guy announced himself as a
Senior Engineer. Well this schmuck took two days to get an SVI on a Cat 3750
up and just started networking about a year ago. While I worked hard for
mine and have recertified it twice over the past 7 years now, he got his in
weeks with you know what...... Pretty blatant about it as well as they
passed them around work talking about how they can get CCNP in just a few
weeks. These guys blow and I wish Cisco would do something about their
testing system.
In any case, I got mad, I mean really mad that nobody could see through the
charade of these fake qualified network engineers. February of this year I
had enough and I knew there was only one thing to do. Get something that
they couldn't get or at least they would have to work real hard to get and
based on their work ethic, I doubt they would ever get it, the CCIE. I
worked my @$$ off since I got the materials end of February, and by the
grace of GOD and my lovely wife I was able to get my number in RTP on June
27th. I pretty much shut my family off for the last 4 months, while my wife
took care of everything, the kids, the house, the dogs...... To give
everyone an idea of the hours I put in.... I worked 40 hours a week, I
studied everyday after work, from 6 pm to 2 am labbing and 12-15 hours each
day on the weekends. I took one day off and that was Mothers day and then I
attended InternetworkExperts 12 day bootcamp. I actually finished their
bootcamp material by the 3rd day of the bootcamp and Brian Dennis and
company was nice enough to let me mock lab the rest of the days I was
there. The InternetworkExpert bootcamp was nice to get away for 12 days
and lab for about 12-15 hours a day. I went outside once the entire time I
was there and that was for a 5 min walk to look at the pool and I didn't
turn on my tv once. I probably squeezed in about 3 weeks of lab time in 2
weeks of time. In essence, I was driven to get the CCIE from start to
finish in about 4 months. Granted I have about 8 years Cisco experience,
but it hasn't been hands on everyday the past 3-4 years because I work in a
lab environment now and no longer do operational support, thank god for that
too.
It was a hard road, and there was many times I kept telling myself this is
too hard and will I never get there. However, I kept telling myself as long
as I keep studying and as long as I keep labbing I will always learn
something and will get closer. You might think I'm crazy, but I had a goal
and my wife said go for it. As I've said in previous posts, my motivattion
was not money, but to gain the knowledge these other guys didn't have and to
achieve CCIE status, something most of these paper certifiers won't ever
get. I have to say that I must thank these guys at work for the
motivation, and I will today when I go in to work in 2 hours after I get my
Cisco polos embroidered with the CCIE logo and install an LED behind it. :P
Seriously though, they gave me that spark that I was missing for years and
passing this lab attempt has ignited it even more. Now if you've managed to
endure the past few paragraphs of blah, all you first time CCIE candidates
enjoy my recommendations, which you've all heard time and time again I'm
sure.
Study the Core, lab the Core until your fingers bleed. Get your Core down
to at least 3 hours or less. InternetwokExpert WB3 labs are awesome for
this, I got those down to 2 hours or less, some of the hard ones took 2 1/2
hours. Speed and time management was huge for me. I probably put in about
500 hours of harcore lab time the last 4 months. I initially started
InternetworkExperts WB2 doing labs in like 10 hours, learning and
understanding the theory behind things. They were tough at first, but I
constantly would go back and reread the DOCCD and reference all my books, I
have ton of books. I watched their technologies COD 2 1/2 times in it's
entirety. It took a lot of coffee and doing it hands on with them to stay
awake. Brian Dennis's jokes couldn't even keep me up anymore after the
first go around. ;) After a few months I started completing their labs in
entirety in about 4 hours. Once this happened, I would do them and then
look up everything in the DOCCD, no matter if I knew it or not. This was my
DOCCD familiarization stage. I actually picked that up from Scott Morris
from somewhere I believe. Here it comes, you've heard it before, and you're
going to hear it again....
KNOW YOUR DOCCD.. I guarantee you will get something in the lab that you
haven't seen before. This is where speed on the CORE was essential for me.
By lunch I had completed the lab once over , ran my TCL script, and was
feeling a little uneasy still, but I had the meat done. I'm a paranoid guy,
you can ask others. The only thing left was verification and digging in the
DOCCD for those few things I didn't know. I verified twice and each time I
found one small mistake that would have cost me 2 or 3 points each. Oh and
by the way, I still don't know the answer to one of them weird questions,
even now that I'm home and I have google, so here it comes, here it comes
again, KNOW YOUR DOCCD. My last suggestion is make sure you know theory
very well in the CORE IGP, well everything you learn really, but especially
your CORE. you've heard time and time again Switching, FR, and IGP probably
will be half your points. If you understand the mechanics and how things
work, no matter what scenario you get you can work through it. If you
memorize the vendor WBs, it won't help in the real lab.
So I guess I should recognize people and materials that have helped me.
First off, my wife and GOD. If I don't mention her first, she might kill me
and probably the same about GOD... O_o Next, InternetworkExperts ver 4 WBs
and their Technology COD. I have the Brians' voices engrained into my
head. Brian Dennis, Josh Finke and crew from InternetworkExpert were nice
enough to hook me up in the last hours. Also, IPExperts audio CD with Scott
Morris. I bought their WB package, but I only used the audio portion. I
thought it was very good and I probably listened to it about 5 times in it's
entirety driving to and from work everyday. It was just an extra tool to
feed my brain the knowledge it needed.
I already have the materials from InternetworkExpert for the SP track and
will hit that at work starting this morning since this is what I do at work
everyday and my boss will let me study while I lab it up on our 7604s. :)
MMM Knowledge, I think these guys at work turned me into an animal. Watch
your back Petr, I'm coming for your CCIEs and I'll probably pass up Brian
Mcgahan in 6 months because he's a slacker. j/k man. ;)
Good luck to all other CCIE candidates and I hope this email helps.
regards,
Dale
P.S. Don't unicast me for any NDA crap either, I'll turn your ass into
Cisco.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Tue Jul 01 2008 - 06:23:23 ART