My ROUTE progress
In late July, I boldly(stupidly) said I would try to knock out CCNP ROUTE in a month. That would put me at testing about now, late August. Yea... about that.. lol. I declared this right after completing my CCNA July 15th, so I guess I was thinking I could take on the world. And to be honest though, I knew that this goal was partially impossible (for me, maybe not for others), because of the depth of knowledge the NP level exams require, but I wanted to throw that challenge out there for me to push for, knowing that I would inevitably reach a new "knowledge plateau" at a minimum.
Well I'm here to say that there is no way I'll be testing by the end of the month lol. At the same time, it's a total mission accomplishment for me. I've come so far during this month. I've been going at it hard and I'm just now covering the topics of BGP and IPv6 which are the latter part of the course if you're going in order. Plus, these new topics present tons of additional required knowledge, especially for those unfamiliar(me). The thing is that with EIGRP, OSPF, redistribution, summarization, route maps, and ospf over nbma for example, there's SOO much being covered. And I'm seeing more and more that these are the basics and foundation for everything, and that I seriously need to know this stuff cold if I want to be a decent network engineer in the future. As a result, I definitely will need much more time, and I'm fine with that.
It is kind of a good feeling though knowing that I put in so much time, yet still have much more time to go, because I see how difficult it is to obtain. Part of me says, well if I WAS ready to test just after a month of hardcore studying, would I feel legit about it? I guess that's the encouraging thing, knowing that it's gonna feel darn good to pass this test. For me, I'm learning routing protocols and all that, but I'm also learning a lot about perseverance. Sure, I like the material and find certain parts pretty impressive, and that's what keeps me excited to see how it works and figure it out. However, for me, it's also about coming to terms with the feeling of daily frustration when studying hardcore lol.. or maybe not even frustration per se, but just the feeling of having those daily brain cramps. The feeling of getting back in the saddle and getting thrown around like a bull daily. I guess the payoff hits when you finally go ooohhhh and things become clearer.
Anyways, I'm thinking at least another month for me, but probably more. For all the others out there currently going for CCNP ROUTE like me, let's keep attacking this thing! It's a battle, us against the protocols, and we must defeat them!! SPARTA!! lol
