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In 2011, I enrolled Network Engineering at the Fujian National Engineering University.
At that time, there were a lot of training institutions coming to our school to give out lectures including SPOTO. Some of students and me in my class went to SPOTO and started learning CCNA and this started my networking learning in my life.
I was a little bit scared when I first came into studying CCNA course because the configuration manual, study guide, a lot of commands and some knowledge that I need to understand and keep in mind or memorize. I was so worried that I couldn’t remember it. However, after several lectures by the tutor during class, I was gradually used to it after the class was consolidated in time. Then after I finished the CCNA course, I went to exam with my first certificate CCNA.
When I finished CCNA, I started the CCNP course. Learning CCNP is a bit more difficult than CCNA. When I was studying, it required relatively much more energy by learning CCNP, it was very bad because I did not pre-read before class and the experiment was a little more than CCNA. I was more fun-loving as a king of the fail in exams.
I still have to look at the CCNP instructional video and completed the experiment in order not fail to catch up with the progress during the summer before I attend the summer BOOTCAMP course. I finished my CCNP course study about 75% complete then study in the summer BOOTCAMP.
Now I think that BOOTCAMP's course is still very useful. For example, at the time of the project drill course, we divided into 4 groups to conduct project bidding simulation and also learned how to make PPT, network topology, and project bidding simulation. They are all soft skills that must be possessed in the work of the company. In the course of BOOTCAMP, some courses such as AAA, ACS, IOS upgrade, device password recovery, etc. which is more practical and frequently encountered in real life situations.
After finished the studying of the BOOTCAMP course, I took the CCNP certificate in year three of my university and then I left the school for an internship. I interviewed by several companies but because of the internship, the salary was halved only 1500 to 2000 almost. Since I was admitted to CCNP, so I was interviewed by several companies and offered as well as I got the certificate. However, I didn’t pick them as I felt those are low salary at all. After that, I went to Shenzhen and worked with stuffs not relating with the Internet.
I have to say that the impact on my life in Shenzhen has been quite big in the past six months. During this period, I met many people and things. When I first started in Shenzhen, I did a customer service for Taobao.com. The online store was a cousin of me. At the beginning, the business was good. I would like to go with my brother after selling every day. Going to the warehouse for delivery, but it didn’t take long for since after Taobao listing on global market. The changes in the online store were relatively large and the requirements were high. Then the business gradually became dropping and the partners who opened the online store with us were all kinds of traps. The funds can't keep up with all kinds of things and finally they didn't open the online store. Then I went to the MIPC cloud camera with my brother and I sold the flyers and products to the market stores every day. The product demonstrations, the people I met during the period were refreshing, stingy and loved. I won't say much, or I will be far away. After that, due to the defects of the product, it treated as GAME OVER. In short, after half a year, I felt that I have to observe the market trends at the moment and walk in front of the others, otherwise I will only be able to tighten my belts when I fall. And it is best not to do this kind of "conformity" in doing business, just like I used to sell mobile phones on Taobao, mobile phone accessories are just price wars and who’s funds are sufficient then who will be the winner, or else who can only close and leave. And the business that combines with the service must first understand the advantages and disadvantages of its products and know how to show it to customers. When doing service, you must make your own unique service features, so that customers can feel convenient, timely and effective. Although the experience of Shenzhen for half a year may not be related to my study network but let me be a little mature, not as naive as when I left school.
When I returned to Fujian from Shenzhen, I returned to Fuzhou in March to start the CCIE study course. Let me first talk about the way I learned in CCIE, I was unemployed. I spent time huge time for study and I will read the CCIE specific subject tutorial video of Dennis before the class and take notes with the word, write down the problem that I don’t understand and then I will raise them to Dennis when I went to class. As a review, I went through the knowledge by learning in the previous video and when I finished the class, I will finish the experiment of the course and ask the questions I don’t understand in time.
I remember that I still had a habit of reviewing the knowledge of the previous class every day when I woke up, I was more diligent when I was studying CCIE, so my progress did not fall, even a bit advance. When I finished the multicast chapter, I started my LAB practice.
It took me about 8 hours to finish the configuration at the first time. I have to say that my confidence was a bit drop and I was still practicing by reading the PPT at the same time, but I was not afraid (because I heard that there was someone have to finish it in 3 days), so I practice with configuration LAB twice every day. At the beginning, it was slower and almost finished in the midnight 2 am and sometimes even longer. In this way, after I practiced around 16 times, I can only control the configuration duration within 3 hours. Some students may worry about 3 hours for a long time. In fact, many of the commands are pre-configured during the exam, so if you can finish it within 3 hours during practice that must be enough for you during the real exam.
In the case of TS, my summary is that it is no concern at all to follow the training of Dennis. If you completed those practices, there is absolutely no problem in the exam venue. Dennis’ training has put all the possible mistakes, and all are included. Anyway, I was doing this, but you have to pay attention to and you must not memorize the failure commands only, you must understand!
After more than a month of hard work, I finally went into theCCIE LAB exam venue. Still the same reserved Walden hotel in Hong Kong. I didn’t continue practice a few days before the exam and I was concentrating on reading the battle report and collecting information. The change was not very huge, and the fault diagnosis changed. However, Dennis gave me the most updated solution and I have to say that he is very powerful and technical. The exam was also smooth on that day and there was no difference between practice and the real exam. The configuration was H1+ and the spanning tree was H1. After the examination on May 22nd, I have been trapped because it took on Friday, the results will not be available until around 2 pm next week and the days waiting for the results are really difficult to sleep and I finally got the CCIE number.
I think CCIE's learning can treat as simple and difficult as well. The key is belonging to your attitude of learning. CCIE is just a stepping stone to enter the industry. It is just the starting point and there are still many things to learn. After all, the growth of IT industry is relatively rapid. Let's take an example of my current department. I am currently in banking and the technical requirements are still relatively high. There are about 12 engineers here. There are 8 CCIEs and most of them finished their exam 2 or 3 years ago. They have to spend an hour every day to learn something new. So even after finishing CCIE, you still have to keep learning! CCIE is just the foundation of a high-rise building. How to build this building is still going to work hard.
