From: Scott Morris (smorris@ipexpert.com)
Date: Mon Apr 09 2007 - 19:10:38 ART
You definitely do not have an easy time on your hands!
The best thing I can tell you to do is to sit down and talk with your wife.
She'll eventually get into a "nesting" phase and want to spell out in detail
everything going on in your life (I can only compare this to like a personal
ISO certification process!). Talk to her ahead about a plan for studying
and give structure to it.
The structure to studying may help you out a lot as well, but having the
buy-in from your wife will help to reduce a certain set of stress anyway.
From a budget standpoint, don't expect to pass the first time. But what I
would do is to make sure you at least have one good/valid attempt before the
baby comes along. If nothing else, you can validate things you do know and
separate the fears from reality about what the lab is really like.
Then revisit your structure and how your time works in with house, wife,
baby, etc.
Having kids will certainly rearrange your study time, but not necessarily
kill it. But in the very beginning, you're going to have strange
hours/interruptions by the little one wanting to eat. From a parenting
skill standpoint, I can suggest that working that baby into a schedule as
best as you can from the very beginning will actually make your life much
easier! My little ones (almost 3 and 2 now) were sleeping through the night
by 8-9 weeks old. (Sleep deprivation is used by some cultures as a form of
torture you know!)
But anyway, still through all of this, managing your expectations of study
time versus family time is important as well as managing your wife's
expectations is equally important. While nobody has done any official study
about the number of people who got a divorce/breakup prior to earning their
numbers, it certainly is a contributing factor!
Best of luck on all fronts there!
Scott Morris, CCIE4 (R&S/ISP-Dial/Security/Service Provider) #4713, JNCIE
#153, CISSP, et al.
CCSI/JNCI-M/JNCI-J
IPexpert VP - Curriculum Development
IPexpert Sr. Technical Instructor
smorris@ipexpert.com
http://www.ipexpert.com
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
James Russell
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2007 3:27 PM
To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: OT: Feeling overwhelmed
This is sort of OT, but I was wondering what everyone does when they feel
overwhelmed with studying for the lab. I just passed the written on Feb
3rd, and have been studying 30+ hours a week ever since. I'm learning a ton
along the way, but sometimes I feel like I have no prayer of learning enough
to pass. I am scheduled to take the lab on July 6th, but I may not take it
then.
How do you deal with the stress of studying, work, family, etc? My wife is
pregnant with our first child, we are in the process of buying a house, and
I'm trying to pass this lab. I guess I just wonder sometimes if it is worth
it or if I should wait a year before attempting it. Thanks for letting a
newbie vent.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Tue May 01 2007 - 08:28:35 ART