Re: How do you know when you're ready?

From: Mohammed Naviwala (monavy@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Aug 25 2008 - 16:02:41 ART

nice thaughts....

On 8/25/08, Lloyd Ardoin <Lloyd@thewizkid.biz> wrote:
>
> I think this is a tuff question becuase it is more than just your knowledge
> of
> the techology although that obviously has to be there. I was told by a very
> smart guy that if you are not scoring at or close to 100% on the IGP
> section
> of your mock labs then you are definitely not ready. Other than that it
> comes
> down to what other technologies you might see, your time management and
> organizational skills and something that is not talked a lot about but how
> you
> handle the psychology of the whole event. For most of us it involves making
> travel arrangements, the travel which can be stressful in itself and then
> sleeping in a hotel room the night before which I have never done very
> well.
> One of the best suggestions that has been provided is to make an outline of
> each section with the list of tasks and points to help you with time
> management and organization, read the lab all the way through before
> starting,
> drawing your own diagrams to help familiarize yourself with the network
> layout
> and ip address scheme, but how many people really do these things and
> practice
> them in advance? One of my great faults is having a difficult time leaving
> a
> task and moving on if I can't get it done in an appropriate amount of time
> and
> that can be a fundamental cause of failing and I know it! Another
> suggestion
> has been to do all the core tasks, do the tasks that provide you full
> reachability first and come back to fill in the gaps. Sounds easy but I
> have
> found in practice can be difficult to do for me and probably for others.
> And
> we all know that we have to be very familiar with the DOC CD/DVD in
> situations
> where we have to look up something that is not familiar to to verify a
> correct
> implementation of a task, which means read, read, read. How do you know
> when
> you are ready? That is a question that we all have to answer for ourselves
> and
> some of us will be right and others will not. And if you go and don't get
> your
> number then you were not ready and willl have cost some time and money to
> find
> that out and you can take from that experience to fill in the missing
> pieces.
> I think being ready is more than just having the technologies in hand but
> that
> is a large part of it, putting in the hours and doing the work but there is
> all that other stuff too. Going and not getting your number is not
> failing...giving up is failing...
>
> Lloyd V Ardoin
>
>
>
>
> From: Paul Cocker
> Sent: Mon 8/25/2008 2:55 AM
> To: 'Narbik Kocharians'; 'Scott Vermillion'
> Cc: 'Jonny English'; 'GS CCIE-Lab'
> Subject: RE: How do you know when you're ready?
>
>
> But how do you know when you know 95% of the subject matter, if you can't
> rely on mock labs?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
> Narbik Kocharians
> Sent: 25 August 2008 07:39
> To: Scott Vermillion
> Cc: Jonny English; GS CCIE-Lab
> Subject: Re: How do you know when you're ready?
>
> Johnny,
>
> * I keep pushing it back thinking the extra 2 weeks is going to help and
> I'll be able
> to do a few more labs.*
>
> What do you do in that 2 weeks? Do you do more mock labs? When you do the
> extra mock lab/s, do you learn many little things that you were not aware
> of, or are you just learning a point here and there?
>
> When you know 95 percent of the material that is when you should take the
> exam and we know that the remaining 5 percent is one of those "007"
> configurations.
>
> You also have to understand that *some* of these mock labs have absolutely
> NO relevance to the real test or real networks. Sometimes they are
> created by some vendors so they can say that they know how to create some
> of
> these weird labs and their mock labs are much harder than the actual test.
> In CCIE that means NOTHING. The subject/material is NOT cumulative and that
> philosophy does not apply here.
>
> What i am trying to tell you is "hey don't panic because you did not or
> were
> not able to perform some of the tasks in lab 65 by XYZ vendor", because
> that
> does not mean anything.
>
> The real exam is not that complex, and its an attainable goal, one of my
> students that took my boot camp was very ready, and two weeks before his
> exam he took one of these simulated labs through this vendor, and he did
> not
> get a good score, and he was very disappointed, i asked him NOT TO WORRY
> and
> i asked him to totally ignore the test results, and he did just that, he
> took the real test and passed on his first attempt.
>
> One thing you need to be aware of is that passing on the first attempt is
> somewhat lucky, i passed my SP in my first attempt and i am the first to
> tell you that i was very lucky because there were few questions that i
> could
> have configured them differently.
>
> So if you think that you are ready, stop waisting your money and pull the
> trigger, that is the best scale, little expensive but the best scale.
>
> Good luck mate.
>
> On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 8:49 PM, Scott Vermillion <
> scott_ccie_list@it-ag.com
> > wrote:
>
> > Hey Jonny,
> >
> > A lot of people pass never having felt "ready" for the beast, so you must
> > be
> > in a pretty sweet spot! I would say that all you have to lose at this
> > point
> > is some cash but what you stand to gain is the experience of the lab
> > itself,
> > which is a reasonably good investment pass or fail (assuming, of course,
> > that you're already in "the zone" that you so clearly are). Having said
> > that, it might be a good idea to ask yourself honestly what your soft
> spots
> > might be and then map out a plan of attack for final prep. Set your date
> > accordingly and then put it out of your mind completely to change your
> date
> > (mulling that sort of thing over is itself an unproductive distraction).
> I
> > can recall thinking that I needed >just a few more weeks< for a couple of
> > months leading up to my date in SJ but once I got past the 30-day point
> of
> > no return/refund, a certain level of focus materialized. I personally
> shut
> > out all distractions -- dare I say it...including the list -- during that
> > final month of intense prep.
> >
> > And yes, Cisco Assessors and vendor mock labs are a pretty good gauge of
> > readiness, IMHO. Not perfect, of course, but they're a reasonably good
> > measure of both your technical prowess and your time management/lab
> > strategy
> > posture...
> >
> > Best!
> >
> > Scott
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
> > Jonny English
> > Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2008 8:07 PM
> > To: GS CCIE-Lab
> > Subject: How do you know when you're ready?
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I was wondering, how do you guys know when you are ready to sit the lab?
> >
> > When it comes time to booking a date, I make a booking a month out, then
> > I always look for dates 2 weeks from the booked date and book that. I
> keep
> > pushing it back thinking the extra 2 weeks is going to help and I'll be
> > able
> > to do a few more labs.
> >
> > I actually feel ready, I did the cisco assessor lab over the weekend and
> > got
> > a score that was ok. Similar to what other people get, and they pass.
> >
> > So I thought I'd ask, when do you guys just bite the bullet, pay for the
> > lab
> > and tickets and go sit the thing?
> >
> > Thank You,
> > J
> >
> >
> > Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
> >
> > _______________________________________________________________________
> > Subscription information may be found at:
> > http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
> >
> >
> > Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
> >
> > _______________________________________________________________________
> > Subscription information may be found at:
> > http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Narbik Kocharians
> CCSI#30832, CCIE# 12410 (R&S, SP, Security)
> www.MicronicsTraining
> www.Net-Workbooks.com
> Sr. Technical Instructor
>
>
> Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> Subscription information may be found at:
> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
>
>
> Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> Subscription information may be found at:
> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
>
>
> Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> Subscription information may be found at:
> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 

-- 
Best Regards

Mohammed Abdul Razzaq

'A bird sitting on the branch of a tree is not afraid of the branch
breaking; bcoz the bird trusts not the branch but its own wings. BELIEVE IN
URSELF'

Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Mon Sep 01 2008 - 08:15:32 ART