One Week Until 70-290: History, Feelings, and Such
This is the first certification exam that I have taken since I passed the A+ in August of 1996. At the time, I had 2 years experience as a technician and found the A+ a relatively easy exam.
For a short time in 2000, I was working as a network engineer for an ISP that had me studying for my CCNA, but that company went under in the dot-com fallout, and I never actually tested. Except for one 5 month stint, my jobs since then had me doing very little network engineering.
In 2005, I was asked to teach 4 classes at a local community college. Intro to Hardware, and classes based on Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server, and Network Infrastructure. I am comfortable with the material and found myself working with students who had no networking experience, so I needed to present the class at a pretty low level.
I thought the classes would be a one time thing, but it turns out, enrollment was low and the college is not interested in hiring a full time network instructor, so I am staying on as an adjunct instructor as long as the classes make minimum enrollment (I work for the college as a full time IT support engineer).
The classes that I teach are part of the business department's network curriculum. The college also has a vocational school as well that offer classes in auto repair, cosmotology, nursing, electronics, and ironically, computers and networks. Since we are in a rural area of Florida, and enrollment in the academic and vocational networking programs are low, it was decided that both departments needed to integrate some of their goals. Due to my years in the industry, I was asked to be a program advisor to try and help boost enrollment of the vocational program and to possibly create a path from the vocational side into the academic side.
What I found is while the academic side offered an Associates in Sciences degree, the vocational side offered nothing more than a certificate of completion which states that the student was present for all 1650 hours required to graduate the program. I mentioned to the instructor and the dean that they may want to focus on certification in addition to the clock hour certificate. That idea went over well, and after some re-tooling, it looks like the main focus will be on the A+ and Network+ exams.
Where does that leave me? Well, under certified to act as an effective advisior about certification path. When this all came down, I was already scheduled to take my 70-290 exam on Sept 29th (I made my appointment back in mid-August as an incentive to study). I choose to take 70-290 first because I had just finished teaching Server 2003 in the summer semester. My supervisior, and the college network admin, said I was nuts to take that test first (he is 70-270 & 70-290 certified). I explained that since I had just taught the class that the info was fresh... Now, after 5 weeks of intensive study, I see why he said what he did.
When I was teaching the class, I was teaching to students who were coming in cold - they really did not understand the concepts of Domains, Groups, or even user accounts. Teaching them the basics was easy and clear. There was no time to teach them the intricate aspects of permissions and other subjects which I thought that I understood well.
Fast forward to August and the beginning of my in-depth study for 70-290. I was immediately humbled by the complexity of the material that students are expected to know for the exam. Don't get me wrong, I have a decent amount of exposure of Server 2003, but it was the depth and scope of the material that shocked me so much. My first two trancender tests were in the 600's (even up to two weeks ago) and I was starting to feel hopeless. Then came a huge emotional ****. I wanted to change my exam to 70-270 or the network+ - two pratice exams of which I passed easily without any study. Kudos to my wife for keeping my feet in the fire and saying "If you don't sit for this exam - pass or fail, you'll never go back and take it!" I knew she was right and agreed at this point it is more important for me to take the exam than it was for me to pass it.
After accepting my situation, I managed to turn a corner and since then, my understanding has considerably cleared (I think it may have partially been a stress related block) and my practice scores are between 700-800, still too low for comfort, but better none the less. I can't say that I am confident, but I can say that I am comfortable with most of the material, and for the first time, feel like I have as much of a chance to pass it as I do to fail it. I have read other posts on the site and feel the stress in people's posts. I have met other people who know material and can apply it, but just dread the tests. I have known about the MCSE path since 1996, but this is my first serious attempt at taking any of the Microsoft tests. I knew that 70-290 would be hard, but I had no idea how hard, and it was out of over-confidence that I decided to start with 70-290 ... a decision that I have decided to accept and face. 7 more days ... if I pass, great! If I fail, well... I'll live and it will be back to the books.
