From: Waterman, Roy (Roy.Waterman@colt.net)
Date: Thu Jan 08 2009 - 04:50:19 ARST
Congrats man!
A very inspirational post.
Treat yourself in this new year to loads of sleep and a gym membership
:)
Regards
Roy
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Johnnie Utah
Sent: 08 January 2009 03:59
To: Cisco certification
Subject: Passed on third attempt
Group,
Just wanted to share that I passed on the third attempt yesterday. I've
submitted fewer than 10 posts on this mailing list, but I've been a
reader since 1999, so for those of you who spend time each day to keep
the list alive and respond to technical questions related to lab prep,
kudos - you know who you are, and what you do does matter to the
hopefuls.
I submitted a post after my second failed attempt in July of '08 and
went into a pseudo hibernation for about four months before getting up
off the canvas to take another swing...I'm not going to share any
details about the prep, I wouldn't add anything that hasn't been said
already, namely regarding specific vendors, bootcamps and the like.
I did want to write about a few emotional/health topics that nobody told
me about when I signed up to do this...What I've learned at least for me
personally, as the lab date gets closer, the more tense, anxious and
irritable I became. Not pleasant to be around at all. I can attribute
this to a few things:
1. I spent most of my time studying late into the night due to working a
full day, spending time with the kids and seeing them off to bed. The
lack of sleep will eventually take it's toll.
2. You become so consumed with studying that things like a good diet and
regular exercise become non existent. Thus, the "what can I eat quickly
and return to studying" turns into a horrible diet, and I really didn't
care at the time, it was more concerned with quick and easy. Bad diet
and no exercise = feel like sh-t.
3. Guilt of choosing to study versus family time or anything else -
Every time I knocked out an 8 hour lab, I felt like I should have been
doing something else. Not to say others out there are like this,
because this journey is very important to one's career, but there is a
guilt element that some of you have felt and others will experience.
4. Back on sleep - late studying equals staring at the ceiling when you
go to bed. Configs swirling around in your coconut is not conducive to
relaxing and shutting it down. I could seldom crash immediately after
studying. It's like doing an all nighter on a major outage or upgrade
and sleeping during the day when it's over. It's restless sleep because
you dream about configurations. Maybe I'm an anomaly, but I'm sure
there's someone else out there who knows what I'm talking about. I will
admit that I'm a jerk to be around on a bad sleep schedule.
5. Anxiety leading up to lab day is very high. Even the anxiety between
lab completion and finding out the results is off the charts.
So bottom line, I failed twice before, was really down about the second
failed attempt for about 2 weeks. For those of you who are fighting the
good fight and grinding, keep going. I'm an average guy that doesn't
have the huge embedded technical appetite for this stuff that a lot of
you do, but it's doable.
I left the lab feeling good, then on the flight home talked myself into
preparing for the worst, second guessing my solutions, etc. My
Blackberry buzzed at about 1:30 AM with an all too familiar message from
ccie@cisco.com, subject: CCIE Lab Score Report. This time it was
different, I saw the "Pass" designation on my recent attempt, above my
two previous fails. I thanked the Lord......then stared at the ceiling
for the next two hours (WTF?).
Regarding feeling like a tired, anxious, out of shape jerk, it was worth
it. Today was awesome.
Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
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