RE: 6/11/10 - Officially Failed.

James,

There are no failures in that room. It's the failures for years that have excuses why they have never went to that room.

That's all I have to say, since as far as I'm concerned that's all that matters dude. The rest is waiting for you on "your day".

-Joe
#19366

-----Original Message-----
From: nobody_at_groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody_at_groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of Poplawski, James
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 11:24 AM
To: ccielab_at_groupstudy.com
Subject: 6/11/10 - Officially Failed.

Took the Lab on Friday and got my results late Sunday night.

I had some difficulties on the troubleshooting section. There was a Layer 2 technology that I got grilled on but haven't had enough practice with it.

Also when I closed out of the troubleshooting section it inadvertently closed me out of the lab portion. So I got to sit on my hands for a good hour+ until it was resolved. Didn't get to see the config section until about 15min after lunch. Was pretty demoralized and discouraged as I didn't know if I was taking the exam or if my trip was wasted for nothing. Plus having an hour lunch to talk to the proctor and other candidates about nothing could've been better utilized having an hour to think about what I was going to do and how to do it. I ended up staying late to make up the time difference, but honestly losing that lunch period to think of things, calm down, etc would've been nice. Going to check with Cisco (anyone got an e-mail for me) about a retake voucher or something.

Some random thoughts/notes.

Troubleshooting -

Seemed pretty easy, minus the couple items I don't work enough with. That Layer 2 technology is touched on by the vendor's but I don't think it is to the point of knowledge needed for troubleshooting. Definitely will go back through the material I have and see if I'm missing something here or not. I'd say what it is but not sure on NDA and also don't want to get made fun of. "Technology X is what stumped you??? C'mon it can't be that hard..." Or so I thought too.

Config Section -

No real surprises here. Was asked to implement something via the 802 name instead of normal people speak so I looked it up to be sure. I guessed right initially, but didn't want to implement it one way and be completely wrong. There's a lot of material to cover. Like I said I don't think any of it was difficult, just the sheer volume of material to cover. The analogy I give to my non-technical friends/family is it's like learning Spanish. There are those that can speak Spanish and those that are fluent in it. I might be able to speak Spanish, but I'm by no means fluent in it.... Yet. Cisco fluency, not Spanish... I can barely speak English sometimes. :)

Game Plan -

Going to take the next week off, catch up a little on life. Been neglecting things for a bit (@ work & life) and will take the next week to knock if out and lower my stress level. Going to go through my material again, build a game plan, work on speed and maybe hit a bootcamp up.

It is do-able. I'm not really discouraged as you have to put your time in and pay your dues. Watching football, you often see rookies who were allstars in college riding pine in the NFL. They talk about doing the same mindless reps, learning routes, kicking ass in practice, etc. Until the one day they get their chance to prove themselves. I'm going to aim for a few months out and retake it. I definitely felt like I was in the right exam, just need to be a lot quicker and ready to attack. There were a few other candidates there for various tracks. 5 total, me and another guy on our first attempts (R+S), another two on their 4th (1R+S, 1VoIP) and one on his second (SP).

Happy studying! Got lots more to learn and practice on and I'm still hungry for another $1,400+ lunch! :)
JB

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Received on Tue Jun 15 2010 - 02:03:23 ART