How I passed The CCIE Lab Test-A Strategy For Success

[Music] [Applause] thank you it was March 29th of mm I'm sitting in a computer lab in San Jose California at a company called Cisco Systems may have heard of them they're only the largest networking equipment maker in the world and I was there for my fourth time to pass a grueling two-day lab exam for a very important certification that I wanted which meant a lot to my career and I know what you're thinking fourth time what kind of a loser are you but I assure you that that was average in fact I was told some people took that test ten times and still didn't pass four to six is the average it takes a lot of preparation there's cost involved and but it means a lot this even today is arguably one of the most valued and coveted certifications I did pass that time my fourth time but it's how I passed that taught me a lesson that I carried forward into everything else I've done in my whole entire life and I always think back to to that weekend actually was a before the week is Thursday and Friday so day one you build your lab they give you a rack you've never seen a computer rack it's basically a you know a couple of metal rails there's a bunch of equipment in the rack and they give you a pile of cables and they give you a task sheet and they say go build this and you have to go build it you have to wire it you have to document as you go you have all the resource materials in the world or in the room there's a there's a computer at your desk because you need it to configure this equipment there's a CD in the computer with all of their reference materials as well as along the wall there's a bookshelf with all their reference books and if you've ever seen any of these computer and networking reference books they're like 600 pages and that's one subject so there was a bookshelf baldies it's all available to you and they don't expect you to come to this test knowing every you can't memorize every configuration every command line they expect you to know concepts and they expect you to be able to look things up quickly and learn them on the fly and that's how the real world is if you build a network for a customer you don't know everything you don't have to remember every configuration but you need to know where to find that information but you need to know how it all fits together that's the skill they're testing so I get through day one wasn't sure of myself and the way it works is when you finish the day they tell you go back to your hotel relax don't drink it's a recommendation and when you come in the next morning if there's another task sheet on your desk you've passed day one because this is done in phases got a past day one you have to pass the morning of day two and then you have to pass the afternoon of day two and each phase is a gate to the next phase so day ones mostly configuring this thing so I get in there on day two and there's at a sheet on my desk it's my fourth time and it's the farthest I've gotten I had never made it to date you know what happens is if you don't pass day one you come in there's a score sheet you get to hang out for the morning you're allowed to work in the lab a little bit kind of figure out what you did wrong but you don't but you got to leave by lunch because in the afternoon they do the troubleshooting phase that's where they break everything you did and you've got to find a certain number of faults and fix it all right so that's the real test and believe me they make it hard it's not like well I remember what I did they make it really hard so I get in the next morning and there's a task for him like yes I made it to day two farthest I've ever gotten and you have three hours 9 to 12 I'm working through these tasks they were fairly simple remember because you built your lab on day one you built this foundation and day to the morning are mostly services so think about what we do today on the network with voice over IP right we talk to people we run printing over in it we run services or day two is really about configuring these services that run over the network so I got to this section on configuring voice this is two thousand voice over IP was a fairly new thing at that time it was just coming out on the market I really have a lot of experience with it there was no way to get experience but I go into the lab and there were some fairly simple things to configure and I got stuck and between being excited about getting the day to the farthest I've ever gotten for this life-changing career changing certification I was chasing I'm sitting here going I don't know what to do and I can't find the answer I'm going through my books I'm walking over the bookshelf I'm looking up stuff on the CD I can't find anything and I said oh well I guess I'm coming back a fifth time you know I just gave up it's probably out 10:30 in the morning I literally just gave up put my head down my head down on the desk like a fourth grader I didn't cry but close I put my head down on the desk and I just accepted the fact that I was coming back a fifth time it was going to be months from now it's gonna have to spend hours and hours prepping in a lab but I was coming back for the fifth time and after about 10 minutes of feeling sorry for myself I thought well as long as I'm here let me see if I can just you know whatever I can learn because they're not gonna let me come back in the afternoon whatever I can learn and I wasn't even looking for the answer to the thing I couldn't figure out and it popped up right that's what happened it's not true you know you're thinking what's the name of that movie you know where the guy says the funny line and you're trying so hard and you go I'll think of it later and you go on and go and then it pops in it was airplane it pops into your head that's exactly what happened I wasn't even looking for this thing I'm looking for some other stuff I go I think that's it let me try this and I got it working then I got excited I said well if I can do that I'm looking at my watch I'm looking at the task she'd I'm like I don't know I'm running out of time and I'm furiously banging away on the keyboard and I configured a whole bunch more stuff not everything that was on my task list but a whole bunch more stuff including the thing I couldn't figure out so there was four of us in the lab we all go to lunch together and the the proctor said go take a long lunch give me two hours because I'm gonna break all your labs so the four of us go to lunch and we're sitting there in this little cafe in San Jose one guy what her two beers and we're like dude what do you do and he said I'm not gonna make it I'm pretty sure I screwed the pooch on this I'm not gonna make it and the other tooth rut yeah we don't know we all thought we were like toast so we go back at two o'clock and the Proctor comes out to get us and she's congratulations you've all made it troubleshooting I felt sorry for the guy who had the beers and I got through troubleshooting I only had to find 12 faults there were something like 16 introduced in my network and I found them all in an hour and fixed them turned it in and the Proctor said well I'm glad I'm not gonna have to see you here again Spencer but wait there's more the lesson I learned and I have applied this to so many things is sometimes you've all heard the story you know Thomas Edison failed a thousand times to invent a light bulb but the thousand ones the one that work we all know you have to fail but sometimes you have to give up you have to be willing to let it go maybe that's just me but yeah you have to be willing to just let it go and then sometimes it comes to you what needs to be done and telling you how I broke two Guinness World Records and Aviation's a whole nother story but the same thing happened I failed to break the record I was chasing the first time I failed by a lot like I missed it by a mile literally and I just said well I'm never gonna do it I don't have the right airplane I'm not skilled enough this not gonna work and when I gave up and stopped paying attention to it one day I started looking at things that were tangentially connected and I started figuring out the answer and I started calling people who knew more than me and two years later I broke that record and then a year after that I broke that record which is my record and now I'm gonna break that record a third time because now I know how to do it but I had to literally give up trying until it came to me to do it and that's how I've lived the rest of my life ever since March 30th of 2008 a lot thank you very much [Music]

Channel: Spencer Suderman

Views: 28,378

Keywords: ccie, cisco, lab test, ccie lab test, routing and switching, networking, success, strategy, be a winner

Id: ZiORhNJ76V4

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 01 2017