My recent CISSP journey
Okay TE Fam, I promised that I would come back discuss my exam experience so here we go, I hope you brought your earplugs, LOL.
My journey started back in Sept. 2011, not having the test experience I thought that I could walk into this exam by only studying for 30 days prior to my exam and relying on my experience to help me through the way. Boy, I was terribly wrong; the exam totally kicked my rear end. So after 9 months of being depressed about the defeat, I started looking at all the testimonials here about member's success in regards to their CISSP experience. I can tell you that I was extremely jealous which motivated me to try harder for my next exam. ISC2 announced its transition to the CBT last year, "Yes!" I ordered every book through Amazon that had CISSP on it. I subscribed to ccure.org and other authorized test engines. I was seriously on a mission this time. This entire process took me about six months of studying a domain every two weeks using Shon Harris and Eric Conrad's book. I was never able to score over 70% on the ccure tests, I was averaging in the 60's. I had to get thinking like an engineer out of my head. So I finally sat for the CBT in Sept. 2012, sadly to say I scored a 698, I felt like jumping off a bridge, I felt like I let my family down do to my mental absence from the last 6 months. So, I decided that I couldn't do anymore studying for the remainder of the year due to the holiday season approaching (e.g., my birthday, my son's birthday, Thanksgiving, etc.). I knew that I needed to attend a bootcamp because when I was studying I had to wait until my toddler went to sleep and sometimes that was around 10pm and my weekends were totally studying so you see what I meant by being mentally absent from them. I did no studying prior to the bootcamp actually the ISC2 Review Seminar/Training Camp. I was actually excited about this bootcamp, my job was against me going so I had to pay for it on my own dime and after I informed them that I was still going they were still against it because I assume my manager didn't have this credential. So I went anyway. The seminar was great. I had a phenomenal instructor and classmates. Every day went from 8am to 5pm, and then the evening sessions went from 6:30pm to about 9:30pm. My brain has never gone through this kind of torture before so by the time I had dinner and a shower, I couldn't do any like reading for preparation for the next day, I was literally that exhausted, this was M-F. Saturday session was more like a review, we took a 125 question mock exam, we graded it and went over the questions we had wrong. The instructor took her time to go over each question and why we answered it the way we did, which was extremely helpful. I finally found myself thinking like a manager. I scored a 79 on the exam. I still had my doubts because I knew I had a great understanding of the material and its content but my biggest enemy was myself. I have terribly test anxiety. Going over my dear friend Kalkan999's home with him and his lovely wife that Saturday evening and staying the night with them helped me a 110%, we just basically had a CISSP dialogue for about two hours. Talking with someone about the common body of knowledge verbally was so relaxing and its definitely great for memory retention. I went to bed about 12:30 and woke about 7am. So, driving back to the hotel only took me 20 minutes. The exam started 8:45, everyone wished each other good luck, and since it was St. Patricks Day, I wore my lime green dress shirt, lol. When the proctors gave us the thumbs up to commence, I immediately brain dumped everything onto the first sheet of the exam booklet, I was shocked that I had that much information stored in my head, I literally covered the entire sheet. The first 100 questions seemed pretty simple to me, omitting about 4 of the questions answering all my questions in the booklet. At question 125, I took a 15 minute break, I walked with a proctor around the hotel, that helped a lot. I looked at the clock and it was 11:00, 2 of 13 had already finished the exam. So I sat back down and began answering again as I was at Q245 the proctor announced that we had 90 minutes left. I had already made up my mind that I wasn't going to changed any of my answers. Out of 250 questions, I had 12 questions that I hadn't answered, so I went back to those, answered them carefully using process of elimination. So after completing those 12 questions, I had an hour left remaining. So for the last hour, I spent that time carefully applying my answers from the booklet to the bubble sheet. Once I was done, I had 45 minutes remaining for the exam. I felt confident that I didn't need to go back to double check anything. I used only the test methods the instructor had given me throughout the week, by circling and underlining key words in the sentence and answering questions by looking at answers D, C, B, A, that was extremely helpful as well, thats why I prefer the PBT over the CBT. I felt okay leaving the hotel like everyone has, I had my doubts. Then about 5 hours later, my director called me that evening stating that I was terminated from employment, this was on a Sunday. So, instead of me wanting to read my results, I created a filter in gmail for my results to be forwarded to two people, kalkan999 and irishangel. Irish IM'd me on Thursday that I had passed, I called Kalkan999 to inform him and he checked his email and was extremely elated for me. I was in the parking lot sobbing like a school girl but I didn't care at all, lol. The wait was only 18 days. I submitted my endorsement and resume to ISC(2) Friday at 2:30pm and I received an email from them 2 hours later stating that they had received my endorsement documentation and have placed it in queue to be reviewed. Now another wait begins.
