I passed the CompTia A+ in 2021 // (How I did it) 4 Simple Steps! // Part 1

imagine i did all that without recording i did all that what i recorded didn't i what's up guys my name is drawl and today i'm going to give you my tips on how to be successful with the comptia a plus exam if you're wondering why i'm laughing it's because i recorded all this on my cameras without recording it on the microphone so i just had to do this whole take all over again and what can you do but laugh so we're back to it i just want to preface this video by saying what this video is not so it's not a breakdown of what's on the exam or a regurgitated list of study tools that you can use so if that's what you're looking for specifically i'll have links to resources from teachers like jason dion mike myers and professor messer in my description below but there's plenty of videos with that sort of information out there already but i haven't seen anyone put a video with the important mental preparation on youtube so it's the mindset that you're going to need going into the exam and the motivation you'll need if you haven't decided whether or not the field of i.t is even for you so what this video is going to be about is me sharing my learning style and how knowing that about yourself will dramatically affect the way you perform on this exam my goal is to present inspiring motivational tips and resources because the a plus is very comprehensive there's lots of different things that it covers so i'm here to help you out and to chunk down that information so that the process feels totally possible and you get inspired to go out there and get certified so i want to start off by describing who i am and why i'm sharing this video with you i'm a level 2 field engineer certified with the google it support professional certification and comptia's a plus certification so i learned with per scholas which is an educational non-profit based out of the bronx in new york and i graduated in may of 2021 with those certifications i learned so much along this journey and i know that my unique perspective will be something you can relate to and that can inspire you along with your journey breaking into it a quick side note up until november of 2020 i was working as a audio visual technician in new york and that had been my career for the past three to four years up until this year so i was not in it i'm very new to the field i actually just joined the program in february of this year and i graduated in two to three months got my certifications and as of august of 2021 now i'm working in my first job as a level 2 engineer so i just want to say that's how quick your career can change if you choose to make this decision get the certifications and get a job so especially going through a program like preschoolers they had job placement opportunities which dramatically helped me expedite that process but for anyone who's considering whether or not like you know you have to go back to college and get like a master's degree or you have to get a undergraduate degree in computer science like those are all questions i was wondering about and i went on youtube and researched about but what i love about it is that it's accepting for people of all different backgrounds so you can literally come into this field with the undergrad degree in education or communication like myself i study broadcasting and digital media and choose to go into it and make that change happen within less than a year so you get certified and then you choose which area of it you want to go into so there's you know cyber security system administration network administration there's coding front end development so there's a lot of stuff that i don't even know too much about but i just know i wanted to be more into like the network side of things and so that's why right now i'm actually pursuing my network plus certification and i'm back with preschoolers so grateful for them to have an alumni program and the best part about this program which i didn't even mention yet is that this is completely free training so they train you for free and then if you actually do well enough in their program you can get a free voucher and then you can go and get um you can go and test for free still grateful to preschoolers but as you'll see in this it also takes a lot of work on your own part and that's what i'm here to encourage you about so before getting into tips here's my summer of the exam the comptia a plus certification is an entry-level computer certification for pc computer service technicians as a tongue twister but it's used to certify the competency of entry-level pc computer service professionals in installing maintaining customizing and operating electronic devices so there's no quick and easy way to pass obviously that's super dense there's a lot of information that it covers and there's no one that i went through the program with who said oh it was easier than i thought no it's a lot of material and it's very comprehensive it covers wireless networking it covers security it covers troubleshooting method it covers hardware installation it covers operating systems like mac windows linux so many more we we built a raspberry pi in the program uh we were working with virtual machines so obviously you know you're going to learn a lot of stuff but once you do then you're so prepared for your first job because people are throwing all these quick it acronyms at you like let me grab one from my my deck of index cards here like pci dss let's use a different one because i don't know what that means i don't know what any of these mean actually i forgot splunk what is that let's use something like dhcp right okay so dhcp is a protocol that automatically assigns an ip address to your computer right so things like that like people use that on an everyday basis like i hear all the time at my job i'm an i.t specialist or i.t engineer at a school and so like you know that term gets brought up all the time but like once like say you didn't know what that was before you took the a plus exam but then you know then you take the a plus exam and you know what that means and you're like oh my god i put in all that work this exam was so comprehensive blah blah blah but then you go to work and then you're sitting there on your co-workers and they're like oh they're just rattling off these terms but you already know what it means and you just flow into the conversation because you're like oh i already knew what that i put in the time putting the effort da da da so it's like yo it all pays off it's worth it that's why you know i'll just say it right now before i even begin i think that a plus is so important to get um because it's so expansive so like even if you don't know what area of it you're gonna go into yet the a plus gives you a great foundation because yeah it touches on basically almost any area that you can go into so yeah that's my little plug so entry level certification there's no quick easy way to pass but if i can give you two areas to focus on they would be course objectives number one and number two is the syntax the comp tia course objectives are not as in-depth and descriptive as professor messer's course notes which i'll link to in the description box below but if you can if you can explain every single course objective that's on the exam before you take the exam then you're gonna be all set so that's one way that i used um as just a gauge of whether or not i was ready for the exam right so like you schedule the exam you register for it and and all that so um you have time to prepare when you're gonna take it and i said to myself like if i can at least look at all the objectives that are on the comptia objectives website and i can explain what any of these objectives are at random then i know i'm ready so like that's a good way to gauge whether or not you're ready for the exam cool so that's the course objectives secondly yeah the phraseology okay this is huge guys it's the wording it's the way that comptia has written these questions right so um it's widely known as a tricky part of the exam and because it's standardized testing it's like the sats if you take the sats or from the east coast and all that it's standardized testing so they just do it they write these questions in a way where it has to it has to be applicable to everybody um but the questions are not straightforward so for example instead of asking which protocol is port 993 used for uh rather the comptia test will give you situational scenarios where you have to use context clues to come up with a solution so for example you hear things like the client is experiencing trouble with their email and has come to you for assistance so they're unable to receive emails and when you look at their settings you notice that pop3 is set to port 1004 what is the first step you should take to resolve this issue so you know what i mean like it's a little paragraph for a question that's asking okay like what's wrong what's the issue here and the issue is wrong port number so you really have to reverse engineer the process you have to use what you know to decide what is wrong and what is what should be right it's kind of confusing and if you're not prepared for it it's not going to go your way so i just want to give you the heads up on that before you even jump in okay enough of the chitchat let's get to the business let's get down to it so here's how i was successful in four simple steps right these are my steps these are not things that i pulled off the internet i mean they are but it's not like from anybody else as a whole so what i did was i basically looked back on the what my study methods on how i studied for the exams and i also am just a naturally motivated person so i listened to a lot of podcasts from people like jim quick people like how i built this people who were just very inspiring to me and so i pulled little things and tips and tricks from them and i basically saw what i applied from those people into my study habits and so i'm putting all that together and broke it down into four simple steps for you and um let's get to it number one number one number one learning how to learn and learning how you learn so think about how you currently absorb new information what are your habits when you watch videos when you read when you study how well do you retain or recall that information afterwards so here's something that i picked up while preparing for the exam so like i said i listen to people like jim quick a lot he has a great podcast on how to learn more efficiently and he has an acronym for the word fast it's the letters f-a-s-t where the f stands for forget the a is for action s is for state and t is for teach i'll get into that right now so the forget is forgetting what you already know right so you're coming into this comptia a plus exam right you made the decision to take the exam and you might have a little bit of an ego like maybe you already are a gamer or you build computers or you already are working in it and you're like i just need the certification data so i but i already know like listen i would say the best i think the best thing for you is to come in with a beginner's mindset so forget what you already know forget your expectations of how you're going to perform um forget the distractions and also forget here's the biggest one your limitations so for myself i came from a whole different field i did not come from i.t i came from audio engineering audio visual technician right so my limitations in my mind were like capped out at technician i was like there's no way i can be an engineer but here we are today right it's not even been a year so i want you to forget your limitations and to remember that what you tell yourself that you're able to do that's what you're gonna end up being able to do so if you tell yourself i'm gonna win i'm going to pass i'm going to do it and in quotes you put you put in the work that's what's going to happen for you the a is for action right so learning is not a spectator sport take great notes ask lots of questions for myself i'm personally not someone who's always jumping on camera on zoom and asking the professor hey like you know blah blah can we answer this can we get into that i'm more of a listen and if someone else asks a question and something comes up that i don't know about i'm gonna just take notes and look it up after class or like on google because like i'm not really you know i'm not like type a like that but if if you are even better all the more reason for you to take action uh the s is for state so you are responsible for your state the way you move the way you stand the way you sit while you are engaged all learning is state dependent so curiosity joy and fascination are all states i think he's talking about state of mind here so what state of mind are you going into this learning with are you already defeated are you like what do they call that when you're mellow you're just in the middle or are you like i'm excited like i'm trying to attack this i'm trying to go all in so be mindful of that a quick side note and this is one of those things that like i put in here for my own self is attach your learning to your innate interest right so innate is like what's what you were born with so i would say hone in on teachers that you like when i say teachers i mean people on youtube like network chuck you know you got it what's the name zach from i.t career questions like people like that so if you like those people watch their videos if you don't like them find people you do like watch if you like animated videos you like things with um with animations and i'm not talking about anime i'm talking about like if you like graphics then watch videos like that if you tend to take breaks in between studying um make sure you do that if you like to work in a public space but be on your own so like that was like me in college i had to go to the library because i couldn't focus in my own dorm room there's just i don't know not enough going on but at the same time i also need to be in my own space while other people are working it's also a little bit more motivational when you're like around other people who are working so all to say find out what your learning style is and implement implement that into your study habits the last letter is t t is for teach so learn everything as if you're going to teach it to someone else why would you do that you might ask you pay attention differently when you realize you have to teach something back to someone and the bonus is that you get to learn it twice another one of the youtubers that i love to watch his name is jorge he has a page called network engineering academy one of his suggestions is to watch an entire video twice so the first time is for listening only and the second time is for taking notes so this is if you're trying to understand something and maybe you're on like the power cert youtube channel you're watching a video on like i don't know a wireless router like if it's a brand new concept to you the first time just watch it absorb it don't be worrying about notes because your brain can't handle all that like at the same time like it's multitasking so just worry about absorbing it then watch it the second time maybe on like 1.5 speed speed it up for yourself and then that way yeah and i kind of hit on this already before but i'm going to just repeat myself find out your learning style so are you visual are you auditory sensory i'm a visual learner so graphics and animated uh demos are the best way that information will stick for me i need to understand anything from a bird's eye view or more from like a ground up perspective so i can't just jump right into the middle and start learning from like the middle of a chapter i really have to like start from the beginning because it's like watching a movie halfway through i just feel like i missed out on the fundamentals so i'm always going to start from the bottom up and if you're like me that's how you should approach learning um probably another one of the most important things embody a figure it out mindset that's literally all i.t is all about right so like even right now we're in my in my position i work on a team with it technicians who are we work in different schools all in different schools around brooklyn but i'm in my own station right so i can text them at any time and say hey i have a question but what would be better like if i constantly ask them for help or if i tried to figure out something else on my own first before i went and asked for help right so um whatever you're struggling to understand just think about it like this like somebody has already figured it out especially on the comptia a plus exam like any concept on the exam that you're having trouble figuring out someone has already figured out at this point because the exam has been out for years and years and years so it's just a matter of finding out that information online just doing your research okay are you still with me i know i'm moving fast there's a lot of information i'm trying to squeeze it into 12 minutes we'll see what happens

Channel: GERALDT

Views: 19,163

Keywords: career transition to tech, free online certification courses for electronics, free online certification courses for electronics and communication engineering, information technology and systems management, information technology jobs available today, motivational video for students in computer science, motivational video for students to work hard, strategies for information technology students, information technology, tech jobs, information technology jobs

Id: rOTicto3wAs

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021