Re: The story of number #24235

Congratulations George. The most committed always wins.

Regards

Lejoe

On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 1:56 PM, George Roman <georgeroman_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> I thought it will never happen....
>
> I started my journey in 2007 when i took my CCNP. For some reason i was
> caught in this frustration thing that CCNP was not enough because i have
> seen a lot of guys passing this exam and they did not have a clue.
>
> So i took the written in June 2007 with a very decent score. I thought to
> myself.... how hard can the lab be?? What can they make me do that i do not
> know already??
>
> In June, the company where i was working back then sent me to a CCIE
> Bootcamp for two weeks in Austria at FastLane. After we started there i
> realised that i am not even close because most of the lab requirements have
> nothing to do with the best practice. I started to feel unprepaired and to
> regre that i attended the bootcamp that early but on the other hand i was
> happy that this bootcamp make me realise what i should focus on and that i
> can practice for 2 weeks full time.
> I started to work harder on the lab and i decided to take a shoot
>
> I did my first attempt in Dec 2007 and after the lab i had a feeling that
> it
> was not so bad. My score was about 70% and i have scored most of the tasks.
> Ofcourse after the lab itself i thought i would have scored more and i
> started to wander if i do not missinterpret the tasks. By far i can tell
> you
> that this "interpretation" fear is the most crap feeling that a candidate
> can ever have (you do not know what you did wrong in the lab).
> The strategy that i used back then was to read the entire lab and then drow
> a diagram. It seem that this did not worked good for me...After 1 hour of
> lab i realised that i did not even started. By reading the whole lab did
> not
> helped me because it didn't steak into my head. The diagram did not helped
> me much either.
>
> The second attempt was in June 2008. After the lab, on the way to the hotel
> i remembered that i forgot to do two things for two tasks, but even with
> that i thought i would pass. The score came back in and after i calculated
> i
> was stoned (aroud 79%). My good friend Hrvoije Sostaric (a guy that i met
> in
> that FastLane boot camp) encouraged me to rase a reread which i did.
> Normally this should have taken like 3 weeks but after 5 weeks i still did
> not get any answer back so i asked Cisco: "what is going on there?" Few
> days
> after i received an email that the result is unchanged. I was complitely
> depressed, but what could i do? The fact is a fact.
> For this second attempt i have changed the strategy: i started to do the
> top-buttom approach (but by analysing some of the implications for the
> future tasks, for example if you have frame relay, then try to see what
> protocol are you going to run there, if there is going to be
> authentication,
> just few things so that you do not do it twice) without any diagram. I felt
> that this strategy is much better and i had lot more time.
>
>
> After this i took a short break due to the fact that i got a better job
> into
> another country at a company which name i am afraid to tell because some of
> you might consider that a blasfemy :) The guys at J encouraged me to take
> the CCIE off of my head. So i started again...(this time since i did not
> have my own equipments i started using Dynamips and rack rentals) I can
> tell
> you that it is quite interesting feeling to do both vendors at the same
> time.
> I started by taking my first moc lab (MOC3) from Internetwork Expert just
> to
> know where i am, if i forgot things or not, etc. to this one i scored like
> 82 percent with very light mistakes. On the way i did another 2 Moc and 2
> Asset labs.
> Gys... i can tell you some of the moc labs are realy disscuraging. You
> think
> you did it and then BANG!! the report kicks you. Anyway the proctors at IE
> are very nice persons. Because i was not sure about the score that i
> received, I wrote them about some of the tasks which i thought that i did
> and they helped me understood what i missinterpret.
>
> Now the good part. Yesturday i have been in Brusseles for the third time. I
> was not scared about the lab anymore but the OEQ freak me out because the
> paranoia is huge among the candidates.
> I took a complete 30 minutes to answer the OEQ (at one moment the proctor
> said that i am writting too much). I finished the lab around 14:30 i
> reviewed it untill 16:25 (found one mistake, and i cleared up some more
> possible missinterpretation with the proctor for some of the tasks). My lab
> strategy was to go streight forward (top to buttom) but try to see the
> implications on the future tasks also (guess what it si going to happen).
> After i arrived home, i was very nervous because of the OEQ mainly because
> of the remark that i had from the proctor. I could not sleep all night and
> now, around 4 o'clock i decided to take a look and see if i have update
> from
> cisco. I opened.... and.... BOOM!! the number :)
>
>
> Now i know that a lot of you, candidates are interesting of the material
> that you should use for the preparation. After i went through the exam I
> personally think that there is no need to do some extra prep if you really
> study for the lab. Anyway i tell you what i did: i took the IE product i
> did it like 1 and a half times, i took also the free IPexpert thing and i
> went through this one two times (just to get an ideea how the questions
> should look like and what to study). After that i started to review the
> materials for the written. In the last 3 weeks (think of this like 3 hours
> per day during the week and full weekend, so if you have more time you
> maybe
> clear it out faster) i have used the Ciscopress and for some of the topics
> that were not covered (like IPv6) i used TCP/IP 1,2.
>
> For the lab preparation, i would recommand you to visit IE forum, there are
> a lot of good discussions about each IE lab that they have and you can
> learn
> a lot from the guys that are doing the same mistakes as you.
> Also find a strategy that works for you and then during preparation use
> only
> that one.
>
> First i want to thank Good for giving me strenght to finalyze this, than to
> my family and especially to my wife who supported me so much and encouraged
> me all the way, my good friend Hrvoje Sostaric who encourage me all the
> way,
> to the proctors of IE who understood my frustration and helped me
> understand
> what i do wrong.
> As for the future i am planing to take a short break and then i will go for
> JNCIE.
>
>
> Best regards,
> George Roman
> CCIE#24235 (R&S)
> JNCIP#685 (M/T)
> JNCIS (M/T), CCNP
>
>
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Received on Tue Apr 28 2009 - 14:08:05 ART