Well, well... The end of a long journey.

Journal Pii's Journal: Well, well... The end of a long journey. 6

Journal by Pii on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @10:07PM

I made what turns out to be my final pilgrimage to Cisco's Research Triangle Park campus on Monday to do battle one last time with the dreaded CCIE Lab exam.

The last two times, I had blazed through the exam, finishing very early, and then using some of the balance of my time to review my solutions. You can only review your work so much before going crazy, so I'd left fairly early in each of those attempts.

When you finish as early as I did, that gives the lab proctors time to grade your exam the same day, and each time, my score reprt had been posted by the time I'd finished my 3 hour drive much.

In both of those attempts, I'd driven home feeling very confident, alomst certain that I'd made it. In both of those attempts, I'd come up short. That'll shake your confidence.

I've been doing Cisco networking for 9 years; I'm not some rookie with a study guide. I took each of those failures very personally, and it really was having an adverse affect on my life.

This time, I took a different approach. I made a deliberate effort to complete this exam as slowly as possible, but not so slow as to prevent me from finishing it.

You have 8 hours... In the past, I'd finished in 5 hours, and 5.5 hours. This time, I took 7 hours.

In the past, I'd reviewed my solutions over and over again for and hour and a half, or two hours.

This time, I reviewed everything just one time, in about 30 minutes. I caught two errors, and corrected them, and when I was done going through it all, I got up and left with only 15 or 20 minutes left until "time" was called.

This time, my score report was not waiting for me when I got home. I got to go through the night of the exam thinking "Well, at this point, I still haven't failed it."

I fully expected to have my results by 10:30am the next day... It had never taken longer than that.

I kept checking... No email. 12:30pm. Nothing. 1:30pm. I logged into the website, and my results were not yet posted. 3:30pm. No change.

The waiting was killing me, but all through it, I was able to keep saying to myself "Well, at this point, I still haven't failed it."

On into the evening... 8:30pm... 9:30pm... 11:00pm... No results. I went to bed a full day after having taken the exam, and still I hadn't failed it. I was anxious, but willing to continue waiting, so long as the wait was worthwhile.

This morning, I check my mail at 7:00am, before leaving for work. Nothing.

On the drive, I called my boss, and we commiserated about how crazy it was that I hadn't yet heard. My Mom hadn't called, fearing the worst, and knowing that I'd be in no mood to talk about it had I failed.

When I arrived at work, at about 9:20am (Goddamn DC area traffic...), I set up my laptop, VPN'd home, and started downloading all my email. My buddy came over to my cube, and we were bullshitting. When a break in the conversation came, I glanced back at the mail client.

There it was... I message received at 8:30am from the CCIE program. It came while I was driving. I didn't open the message, logging directly into Cisco's website to go right to the results page. I quickly navigated through the site to the certification section, and began logging into my results page. It occurs to me now that I'd been holding my breath since I saw the email message...

There it was:

Status: Certified #XXXXX

I clicked on the link to the actual score report, which on failures, gives you percentages in broad categories... You got 45% in Exterior Routing Protocols... 87% in Quality of Service... Etc.

Instead of a real score report, it read:

Name: XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX
Candidate ID: XXX-XX-XXXX
Test Date: SEP 22 2003
Test result: PASS
CCIE Number: XXXXX

Wow... I've wanted this for 8 years, and I started getting serious about it some 3 years ago. I never abandoned my life, studying for 8-10 hours a day like some many people do. I simply plugged away, a few hours here, a few hours there. Take a class. Buy some equipment for "the home lab" (See my last journal entry for details). Read a book.

Most of my studying had been based on my failures in prior lab attempts. "Crap, QoS killed me... I need to study that when I get a chance." "Damn, I know I lost 7 points on those Multicasting tasks." "Egads, I can't believe I couldn't figure out how to do ISDN callback."

If you take the test enough times, eventually you'll study everything you need to. :)

I am reminded of some unforgettable words:

"Follow your dreams, you can reach your goals...
I'm living proof. Beefcake! BEEFCAKE!" -- Eric Cartman

Well said Eric... Well said.

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