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Ok, so I’ve had a few days off from studying.  I went to my sisters wedding in West Virginia this past weekend, and have been busy as hell with work since then.  But it seems to be tapering off, so I can get back into my studying routine.

I have one month to go before it’s time for the test.  The closer I get, the less nervous I am.  I’ve been sleeping better.  No more strange dreams about getting into the test and forgetting everything I know.  I still have a lot of work to do, but I’m more confident in my abilities.

I still give myself a 50% chance of passing the first time.  But I may revise that upward.  The big key is not how much knowledge I can cram into my head.  As long as I understand all the fundamental concepts and have some lab time implementing them, I’ll be ok.  The key thing is the documentation CD.  It’s my only weapon against the unknown.  For the next 2 weeks I’ll be using it exclusively to troubleshoot the lab manual.  The goal is to learn the locations of every key topic that I might see on the exam.  If I can find the information quickly, then my chances of passing the test increase dramatically.

Think about it like this.  You are going to take the AP exam for physics.  The exam could cover any topic that falls under a specific concentration of physics, like quantum physics.  The only thing you are allowed to bring in to the exam with you is a physics textbook that literally has all the answers in it.  But there’s no index in the book, and the pages aren’t numbered.  You simply have to know where the answers are ahead of time.  It’s sort of like that.  This way Cisco ensures that if you have to look something up, you already are intimately familiar with the text and you aren’t just guessing.

The doc cd has sample configs in it as well.  These can be adapted to just about any scenario, so I don’t have to worry too much about memorizing a bunch of complicated commands.  But I do have to understand what the commands do, because Cisco will have very specific requirements for how the devices are to be programmed.  You can’t just paste in a sample and expect to pass.

I am feeling pretty good about it.  My goal is to be prepared for the exam by the 15th of October.  That week I have a week long boot camp to prepare.  If I’m completely ready by then, I can use the week to get comfortable with the mental aspects of taking the test.  I don’t want nervousness or stress to play a role in whether I pass or fail this exam.

Time for more studying.  Soon enough, I can go back to a work/life balance that includes something other than studying!