Re: My Failure Report

Hi Ravi,

After reading through your failure report several times I felt compelled
to add my own experience to it.
I took my first lab attempt back in March and failed. Prior to the
attempt I thought that my vast practical experience, reading through
many Cisco books, and working through the IE workbooks on my home lab
many times would be sufficient, after all I had passed a lot of exams in
the Cisco professional area. For me, however, this simply was not
enough and I ran out of time.

Up until then I had passed every exam taken - failure was not in my
vocabulary. After returning from Sydney I did not fire up my lab
equipment for 6 weeks. During this time I had a good hard look at my
life, and questioned why I was taking the lab. Why was it so important
to me, surely I could just sell my kit on Ebay and carry on with my life?
Well no, I came to realize that the overriding reason for me taking the
lab was not for money, to get a better job, or to look good for my
family and friends - they don't know what a Cisco is :) . It was for the
challenge and to expand my knowledge - failure is not an option (though
I might hit some bumps along the way).

The biggest 'bump' for me was time management - too much time wasted on
referring to the on-line documentation when I should have known the
correct configuration or option.

To address this my preparation for my second attempt has been, so far,
very different from my first attempt.

   1. Family time management. Prior to my first attempt I spent a lot of
      time at the weekend when I should have been focusing on my wife
      and kids (that's 3 of them all under 7). Now I study every day -
      and I mean every day - but do so once the kids are in bed and
      carry though to the early hours. This allows me to still have work
      time and family time with study time about 6-7 hours per day. Any
      of you who have gone through the baby stage will know how to
      function with 3-4 hours sleep a night :)
   2. Lab preparation - 1. During the review of my first attempt I felt
      I lost time in the lab by not creating a diagram with all the
      basic information on it (IP addressing, intermediate switch ports
      and VLANs, OSPF areas, etc). Now as part of my study, every time I
      start a new technology lab I create such a diagram with pen and
      paper as quickly as possible and refer to it during the lab so
      that it has become second nature. On the same note, I log into
      every device, pull out the IP addresses and populate a tcl script
      for every single lab. In the actual lab I was very rusty and slow
      on both of these areas.
   3. Lab preparation - 2. This time around I am using Narbik's
      workbooks. I actually bought them over a year ago but never opened
      them - at the time I felt overwhelmed with the amount of
      information available to me. In retrospect I feel a bit of a
      muppet. These workbooks are a revelation. To maximize their
      effectiveness I go through the same routine every time I start a
      new lab (the physical infrastructure is already in place). First I
      power up only the devices needed, then I load their initial
      configuration (after modifying interfaces that may be different),
      after the kit is ready I open notepad and document all the tasks
      and start filling out the code needed to complete the lab. Once
      the lab is complete, I then review against the answers and
      document any comments within the same text file. At times I am
      unsure of what the solution could be - this is where I go to the
      Cisco web site in the first instance, and then refer to the
      Routing TCP/IP books if I need more information. At all times I
      maintain a lab critique file for each each lab.
   4. Lab preparation - 3. I now employ a mind map (also known as a
      spider diagram) to hold all my lab critiques. I use FreeMind but
      there are several available to choose from. Initially I started
      with the blueprint from the Cisco web site as my aim is to ensure
      I cover every aspect. My first node was simply 'CCIE Lab', it's
      immediate child nodes are Bridging and Switching, IP and IOS
      Features, IP Multicast, Security, IP IGP Routing, BGP, QoS and
      TCL. To watch it grow from nothing is great to see and I can
      quickly reference any aspect of information studied to date with a
      few clicks. Once I have completed the blueprint to my
      satisfaction, I intend to consolidate the information into a much
      simpler mindmap - one that can be used prior to taking the actual
      lab again as a memory jogger.
   5. Lab preparation - 4. I purchased the CCIE Routing and Switching
      Audio lecture on demand series and boy are they good. They really
      supplement the labs I am working on. I play the same track over
      and over while working on the same lab (for example EIGRP). At the
      end of the lab work, I then transcribe the audio into my lab
      critique - which then gets added to the relevant section in the
      mindmap. I listen to them at work, at home, and even when sleeping
      (until my wife pokes me to turn it off).

I believe that failing the lab has made me a better network engineer and
architect. My knowledge has expanded beyond my expectations - and I
haven't focused on the IPv6, QoS or Multicast technologies in the same
detail yet :)

So for all who have failed - review your lab and study techniques -
decide if you want to continue and then crank the dial up on studying
100% (there are no shortcuts to learning this stuff).
Remember you are doing it for you, and nobody else. You can do it !

Ravi, thanks again. I look forward to seeing your CCIE number in your
signature in the near future.

Best regards, Andy

Ravi Singh wrote:
> HI Group,
>
> I failed my first attempt at Brussels yesterday and looking at the score
> report I feel I missed it by just a few points ...I would not say that I was
> not prepared .. I was very much prepared technically but what I was not
> prepared with was the format the actual lab is given .. So here I present to
> you a small report on what are my observations, opinion and recommendations
> about the lab ..This is just my opinion of how I felt so it is totally upto
> you how you take it..there may be people agreeing to this ..there will be
> lots of them not agreeing to it ..
>
> PREPARATION
> 1) If you think you will focus on just the core topics and will manage the
> non-core ones...you may be proved wrong on your lab day ..I'd suggest you
> should know every part of the blueprint in-and-out ..I learnt it the hard
> way ..
>
> 2) Whichever vendor's workbooks you are doing do it only to understand the
> technology and concepts..If you are doing the full scale labs to build your
> strategy/speed or whatever for the actual lab, no matter whatever difficulty
> level it is, it won't help much because the actual lab is not formatted that
> way ..In fact if you have completed all the labs that a particular vendor
> has and you can now complete any lab that vendor gives you, you will
> definitely pass an exam that is that vendor's own certification but not
> Cisco because you haven't had a taste of the actual lab ..But since practice
> is also one of the keys to passing the lab , the labs may be helpful in some
> sense who knows ..
>
> OBSERVATION on the LAB
> 3) Due to the NDA constraints the only thing I can say is remember point 1
> above..
>
> RECOMMENDATION/ADVICE
> Since I haven't passed the exam I cannot really recommend anything but for
> people who would still like to know ..here is some advice/recommendation
>
> 4) For the learning material I found Narbik's workbooks the best because
> they explain the technology very clearly and in a very simple and straight
> forward manner..I mean if ARP ,for example , can be explained using two
> routers why go and build an enterprise network setup for it..Narbik's
> bootcamp is also highly recommended because the guy knows the value of your
> money..It would have hurt me more if I would have failed the exam after
> taking a 5000$ bootcamp and some 1000$ workbooks ..During the preparation
> for this attempt Narbik had been a great mentor and a very good friend who
> had helped me more than he actually could ..Narbik, I am sorry to disappoint
> you on not passing the lab but I am personally very satisfied that your
> mentorship had helped me so much in the exam that I was really not worried
> about the technical difficulty of the questions being put in..
>
> NEXT-STEP
> 5) I still haven't decided anything on it yet, because all these gone days
> and months when I used to study in my room and my 15 month old daughter came
> to me asking me to play with her I would have to turn her away on the
> pretext that I would surely spend time with her soon..And now when I see her
> face I just don't get the courage of doing the same thing again ..Its just
> one day that has passed so once I get over the "loser syndrome" , I would
> think about it...I am not gonna give up so easily ...
>
> LAST FEW WORDS
> 6) As I mentioned initially there will be loads of people saying .." He is
> just a whiner ..had he been technically prepared he would have passed the
> lab " but according to my score report I scored a 100% in what everyone
> calls the core topics and the OEQs..What took me to doom was two things
> a) even though I had a strategy/plan etc. ready for the lab it didn't
> actually work because it was not made while doing any labs of that calibre..
> b) Point No. 1 of this email
>
>
> Now for people who have passed the lab,,it's easy to say that failure is a
> part of the journey or stuff like that..but for people who failed nothing
> can be more consoling than the CCIE number in the signature..I anyhow accept
> that in my failure it was nobody else's fault than mine so I would now need
> to work much harder and rise back from the ashes ;-)
>
> I forgot to add that this forum is still the best place to be for the lab
> prep..and I would in anycase would like to thank people who are a member of
> this forum ..Keep up the good work guys
>
>
> Thanks
> Ravi
>
>
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>
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Received on Fri Jul 31 2009 - 23:05:32 ART