I
definitely learned the most from achieving this second R&S CCIE
run more than any other life experience. This R&S lab took me 8
attempts of which I am very proud. It taught me about pure persistence
of getting up again and again after each failure. The sheer amount of
resources I committed to this run were staggering but I took a no matter
what it takes approach and kept plugging away. I refined my approach
each time and mentally it was gruelling at times. I had used all the
materials ranging from Internetworkexpert, Ipexpert, CCBootcamp and
rotated the labs over and over again. I must have done these labs
hundreds of times between 2003-2007. My previous scores had fluctuated a
few times in the low to mid's but for some reason I could not get over
the hump. Before attempt #7, I went to Cyscoexpert for customized,
one-on-one, training for 1wk. We focused on drilling technical
fundamentals of my weaker topics and flushed out hazy areas. After I
failed attempt#7, I went back to Cyscoexpert and this time, the
instructors paid close attention to my approach. And bingo there it was.
Even though my typing skills were blazing fast, I was doing twice the
work because of a bad habit I had of typing into notepad everything
first (from working on production environments). My current approach was
taking twice as long as the average person and hence I was running out
of stamina at the most crucial part of the test the last hour. So we
went to work and completely overhauled my typing approach. They taught
me little IOS tricks using shortcut keys, to read routing tables faster
and move with more agility within the telnet client. To understand the
lay of the land and visualize the layer 2 topology and layer 3 topology
before transposed on top of each other. We worked on my speed until it
was blazing fast. They also helped me to not approach the exam in a
linear fashion but pick cherries and go for points. I stopped doing
things in sequence and started avoiding major traps in the exam designed
to suck time. And finally crossed the finish line on attempt 8. These
guys are the jedi's among CCIE's and the true example of the pursuit of
mastery. They have inspired me to no longer accept just being a CCIE but
to pursue being the best of the best among CCIE's in the entire world.
