3 certs in 3 months?

I recently became a father a few weeks ago so starting January I'll be taking time off work and returning in the spring. Besides being a father, my goal during this time off is to complete the CCNA, CCNP, and VCP exams. Luckily for me and my wife, our son is a sleepyhead so I'm banking on all the free time I can get to study and lab.

I'm hoping to write the CCNA exam by the end of this month, testing center cancelled on me twice. I haven't fully studied for VCP but I'm very familiar with datacenter virtualization and technologies. I have all the study materials (books/equipment) and access to the entire CBT Nuggets through my company.

Realistically speaking do you think this can be achieved? What was your techniques and strategies for developing self discipline and passing exams? I tend to get sidetracked sometimes. As Mrock4 pointed out in his video on another thread (6 Figure IT: Fundamentals) I have the experience and education but I need to start being a cert junkie! Love learning new things.

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Comments

N2IT

You are taking off January to March 21st? (Technically Spring) - Wow that is a long time. Your employer must be pretty relaxed about taking off work. My current employer would give me 1-2 weeks max

Either way good luck, if you grabbed one of those you would be in good shape.

powerfool

N2IT wrote: »

You are taking off January to March 21st? (Technically Spring) - Wow that is a long time. Your employer must be pretty relaxed about taking off work. My current employer would give me 1-2 weeks max

Either way good luck, if you grabbed one of those you would be in good shape.

Yeah, that is a pretty good deal. I would have to add that unless you are an old hat to parenthood, you may be in for a bit of a rude awakening... and that could keep you from studying as much as you would like... but there are tons of dynamics at play, between you, your partner, and the baby... and everyone's health.

I think my employer would be fine letting me use some PTO for a couple of weeks (I know we have a leave program for new parents, but I haven't looked because that isn't a consideration for me any longer... three kids here), but I would probably milk it for an excuse to work remotely as often as possible for the next six months to a year. I can easily do a day every other week without much of any reason at all, but with a good reason, it becomes easy to do several days per week, and sometimes whole weeks at a time.

Best wishes and congrats on the new addition.

WiseWun

Just cleared the CCNA exam today. I thought it was relatively easy but the score did not reflect that because some of the questions weren't displayed properly so I had to guess the answer. The site administrator said this was recently reported by another person so she'll contact Cisco/Pearson. I'm not complaining though, pass is a pass.

@kurosaki00, I do have a network background but my current duties was shifted to OS(Unix,Windows)/Virtualization. I try to keep my knowledge fresh by reading, watching videos and labbing. Luckily for me, I have all the equipments.

@N2IT, I extended my leave of absense until May! Some employers especially small firms usually give 1-2 weeks for the father if he's lucky. I guess its one of the benefits working for large corporations.

I'm going to attempt to write 1 CCNP exam module each month. My son has been keeping me awake at night so this gives me the opportunity to study. I don't think I'll write the VCP because my training is on-hold until I come back. If time permits, I'll go for CCNA-DC and/or write the 646 exam to get the MCITP:SA credentials. It's going to be pretty tough since I'm starting a BGP/MPLS VPN & traffic engineering class tonight but if I can get CCNP by May, I'll be more than happy.

Thank you all for the feedback, I really appreciate it. Should I start off with ROUTE OR SWITCH? I'm leaning towards SWITCH, feel somewhat comfortable with Layer 2 technologies.