From: Tim Fletcher (tim@fletchmail.net)
Date: Sun Jun 22 2003 - 22:53:21 GMT-3
Congratulations Jean-Francois! Great advice.
-Tim Fletcher #11406
At 07:45 PM 6/21/03 -0400, Jean-Francois Vaillancourt wrote:
>Hi guys,
>
>I passed last thursday in RTP. It was a pretty long journey, I guess fairly
representative judging from the posts I've been reading here those last
several months. So, I won't elaborate too much on my background or the
resources I used: no bootcamps, built & used my own rack, borrowed a 3550,
broke the spines off the standard books, and practiced a lot, mostly my own
labs and variations on a few commercial ones. I'll instead try and focus on a
few more psychological and process-related aspects.
>
>1) When are you ready?
>
>One of the questions that kept bugging me is, how do I know I am ready? I
tried last summer, and failed. I felt I was shaky, but had a chance. Well,
that's not good enough. Trust me, when you are ready, you know. Towards the
end of my practice, I started feeling a kind of quiet confidence grow, a bit
like those crystals out of high-school chemistry experiments. That was the
knowledge settling, you sort of integrate all that you have been reading over
the previous months and years. When you read the OSPF chapter in Doyle, and
you feel like you are reading a letter from an old friend, and you go hm-hm --
you are ready. When you read the questions in this forum, and for most of them
you can think of a couple answers, you are ready. The exam is definitely not
about knowing the fancy tricks you see popping here all the time. You simply
need to master the well known core subjects, and be very comfortable with the
doc CD. If you can quickly build a stable network, you will most definitely
have time to look up the weird stuff and check your work. Also, most of the
fancy tricks won't be once you have mastered the core :-)
>
>2) Master your fears.
>
>All of us have subjects we like better, and some we dislike. I realised for
one that I was pretty stong on routing, but feared getting VoIP, QoS, and
multicast. One of the most important things I did was to get down in the dirt,
and force myself to face those subjects. Once I knew them more, my confidence
started growing, and again trust me having that confidence is simply
essential. Once you are ready, there should not be a single subject on the
blueprint that makes you squirm, or think "I wish I won't get hit with that".
Call it serendipity, but I for instance discovered that after all, multicast
is quite interesting...
>
>3) Dig deep.
>
>This whole CCIE thing is a great occasion to structure knowledge, fill the
holes, and temper the intellectual scalpels with which you will dissect new
networking challenges. Don't waste your time looking for quick answers, in
this mailing list for instance. You got a doubt? Research it, lab it up, and
organise your findings in your notebook. This is how you will learn the most.
BTW one of the great resources here is Alex Zinin's book. Get it. You will for
instance be amazed how much more there is to static routes than you thought
:-)
>
>4) Learn to manage time and stress
>
>Most people seldom need to maintain concentration for more than a couple of
hours. Even in university, exams typically last less than 3 hours. Our work is
typically done in bursts, interspersed by meetings, phone calls, etc. So, you
must deliberately practice keeping your wits together for hours on end, taming
that rising feeling of panic when something doesn't work or you get confused.
That is why hands-on practice on whole-day labs is so important. You must know
how long it takes to perform the usual tasks, and keep track of your time and
questions. Based on the questions here, I think many folks put way too much
emphasis on the fancy stuff (remember that FRTS thread? TCLSH ping scripts?
:-), when they would be much better served building mental stamina, practicing
the less exotic, meat and potatoes core stuff. In other words, KISS.
>
>
>So, that's it for now, long enough a post as it is. Outta the gopher hole for
me. Cheers from Quibec, land of the poutine and beautiful wild women :-)
>
>Jean-Francois
>
>
>_______________________________________________________________________
>You are subscribed to the GroupStudy.com CCIE R&S Discussion Group.
>
>Subscription information may be found at:
http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Jul 04 2003 - 11:11:06 GMT-3