One Week Until 70-290: History, Feelings, and Such

deneb829

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.

bighornsheep

Hey,

I think I can relate to the shock experienced when you saw the materials.
I have been using computers personally for 8 years, and professionally working with them for 4. I am in my last year of university in computer science, and my certification path began a year ago when I finally decided to get A+ certified, and from there I've done a couple others in the entry level range.

When I decided to start MCSA track about 2 months ago, I really thought that I was ready, and perhaps this will be more "entry" knowledge I could pick up. However, I'm discovering that MCSA, and particularly, 291 materials is NOT easy at all. I realize that I have never implemented any real life network infrastrutures with win2k3, and that's probably the problem.

But the fact that I'm in my last year, and I really want to prepare well for my first job, I really feel that MCSA will help me. However, my part-time currently, doesnt prepare for networking administration. I'm working with Oracle databases, and I'm not quite sure if I should pursue MCSA anymore.

I know that my passion is still on networks, and technical support, however it just doesnt seem like the factors are allowing that.

see: http://www.techexams.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17621

Now having said that, do you think 290, and possibly MCSA, will help you? If you're in the teaching career, have you looked into MCT? It sounds like you're good at presenting materials, and you like doing it. As you have also discovered, I think that MCSA is very focused on being able to apply knowledge about win2k3 in real life network environments. Which I think seems to be a solid problem for the two of us.

In any case, I hope that you'll keep a positive attitude, and all the best to you on your exam. Hopefully I'll see a positive posts here soon. Good luck~

sprkymrk

Hi deneb829:

Welcome to the forums.

You didn't ask any specific questions or ask for advice, so let me just say that I enjoyed your commentary and sharing your experience as you are entering the Certification rat races full time. I wish you the best of luck, and fully expect a follow up post soon on the outcome of 70-290. I also think you'll do well, just prepare for long-winded scenario questions.

The trick will be to sort out the necessary information from the fluff, recognize and eliminate at least one or two wrong answers immediately, and once you answer a question try to avoid second guessing yourself and changing it.

Good luck!

deneb829

bighornsheep wrote:

Now having said that, do you think 290, and possibly MCSA, will help you? If you're in the teaching career, have you looked into MCT? It sounds like you're good at presenting materials, and you like doing it. As you have also discovered, I think that MCSA is very focused on being able to apply knowledge about win2k3 in real life network environments. Which I think seems to be a solid problem for the two of us.

Hey BHS,
I am not a full-time teacher, just an adjunct. I work an the IT staff at the college. As far as my current job is concerned, it's hard to say. One of my goals listed during my last review was to get server (70-290) certified. Ultimately, even if I go all the way to MCSE, it will not have much effect on my duties or salary here. It's a small college and there is not much room to move up in the IT department. I live in a rural area and took a job as a technician because my commute to my job as a network engineer was over an hour each way. It is only a 5 minute commute to the college. Couple that with the price of gas, health insurance, a great work environment, and time off (6wks vacation/holidays vs less than 2 weeks vacation/holidays per year ) and my $32K/yr job was paying me less than my current <$26K/yr job, and I actually get to see my family. Ironically, I moved here from California where I was doing exactly the same thing and making $40K/yr with almost the same terms. Still, I am not here for the money, and I do get the chance to teach which is great.

I do get exposure to the servers and network. When the network admin is away, I'm available to fill in where needed, also I am very comfortable with our scores of Cisco switches on campus. The VP will not let myself and the network admin both be out of town at the same time during the school year. We are pretty much all Microsoft/Cisco, but I also have 4+ years experience as a systems administrator on Sun, SGI, BSD, as well as Linux. My UNIX based strengths lie more in web servers and services than anything else, so to keep them fresh, I was running my own FreeBSD, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Postfix server with a webmail client and management system, but my hobby email evolved into my primary email, and I ended up moving it to a hosting service because it's more reliable than my DSL line. I am already starting to miss it. The only time I get to use SSH anymore is on my IPCop firewall.

I am very much interested in the MCT, but that also requires at least an MCSA. I'll probably look into the CompTIA CTT+ before seriously considering the MCT - besides, the cost of the MCT is pretty high for a guy in my position, so I would need to be sponsored. I really do feel that 70-290 will be my most challenging test on my way to MCSA because I have experience with network infrastructure and am very comfortable with TCP/IP from my work as a network enginner - don't get me wrong - I am not saying that 70-291 will not be a challenge ... otherwise I will have learned nothing from my current experience with 70-290. I'll have to keep you posted on that. That is going to be the last test I take towards MCSA. My plans are 70-290, 70-270, network+, and 70-291. I haven't seriously considered full-time teaching as a career path, but I do love to teach, so down the road, who knows? But for now, I am going to try and stay focused on the business at hand.

deneb829

sprkymrk wrote:

Hi deneb829:

Welcome to the forums.

You didn't ask any specific questions or ask for advice, so let me just say that I enjoyed your commentary and sharing your experience as you are entering the Certification rat races full time. I wish you the best of luck, and fully expect a follow up post soon on the outcome of 70-290. I also think you'll do well, just prepare for long-winded scenario questions.

The trick will be to sort out the necessary information from the fluff, recognize and eliminate at least one or two wrong answers immediately, and once you answer a question try to avoid second guessing yourself and changing it.

Good luck!

Thanks sprkymrk,
I guess I didn't think to ask any questions when I was writing. I think that I just wanted to explain to people who can understand and appreicate what I was going through. I didn't mean to make this forum a support group It's really great to have a place to share info and experiences about the certification process. I wasn't going to post anything until I took the test next week, but I think I just needed to talk about what was going on - hoping that maybe someone else would understand and could offer some words - which has already happened.

As far as the materials, my biggest problems lately have been the interactive questions. Do they give partial credit? The order things step by step stuff is what gets me. Any advice in that area would be great!

gomonn

I don't think You are nuts cause you are taking 290 first, actually that is the M$ recommandation for MCSA. Many people in this forum have gone that way, and for you, as a net admin, it is a wise decision ...
Personally, I have not taken 290, but went through all the material, and fell more comfortablewith it than 270....
You have the experience, you just need to get used to the wording of the questions ....
I really appreciate your spirit, You seem to be one of the rare IT people who live in the real world, thanks for sharing your feelings.... You are reminding us that we are more than ones and zeros
Good luck !!! You are meant to succeed

deneb829

Thanks gomonn! After I posted, I started feeling a bit self conscious about just writing about what I was going through - I appreciated the encouragement that I have been getting, and hope I can give it back to others when they need it.

You are sure correct about the wording. A couple of times a day, I'll pop open the 70-290 test sim and answer 5 or 10 questions. I have been doing ok, and on one tonight I got 4 out of 5 (I haven't got 10 for 10 or 5 for 5 yet, but many 7or 8 for 10 or 4 of 5). The one I missed said that you create a server, create a backup, and add the computer to the domain. Later the server fails. You restore the backup - what is the next step? (of course I simplified the question, but that was the jist). By not filtering throught the question several times, I didn't catch that I had backed it up before I joined it to the domain - so I choose reset the computer account, instead of add the computer to the domain. I can live with missing the ones that I really don't know the answer, but I really hate missing the ones that I know. I know this is test is going to be close for me - I need all of those answers that I do know!