PCAP: Exam Passed. Certified Associate in Python Programing training tips and lessons learned.

hi welcome back to my basement this is jeremiah wolfe and uh okay so i just passed the uh pcap certification exam pcap-31-0 for the certified associate in python programming certification so i just wanted to go over a little bit about what my experience was what i used to study some lessons that i learned while taking the exam so let's just do that now first thing let's go ahead and take a look at the actual exam uh there we go or rather my actual score report now i will say this is i believe the worst uh of any passing score i have ever achieved in the dozens of career certifications that i have taken over the past 20 plus years my score was 78 that is a passing score but it is a barely passing score uh i probably won or i guess i could do the math real quick but so each question is worth like two points yeah so that would be one question i passed by one question out of 40. there were 40 questions they were all multiple choice and they were significantly more difficult than i was prepared for significantly more difficult than i was prepared for so i'm going to share with you a little bit about what i used to study and what i would do differently going forward if i had to do this again or basically you know what i'm recommending that you do so one of the first things i used to study was this this book now i had passed the pcep back last summer and so i was i started i passed the pcep oops that's not what i want that's what i want i passed the pc ep last summer or early last fall something late i think whatever it doesn't matter um and then i got started on the pc ap and then my wife who was pregnant ended up in the hospital um the she was her health was deteriorating rapidly they had to remove the baby prematurely and then basically from october 1st well from the end of september so from like september 20 something to like 25 or something until just a few weeks ago and today is the 17th of march so basically from mid september through the end of february i have been 100 just focused on the baby and getting him going and all the stuff associated with that um so my studies obviously just just disappeared i stopped studying altogether so i took the pcep i started studying for the pcap and then was interrupted and i tried a couple times to sit down to study but you know i might get a few hours of studying in and then things would fall apart because of the baby so um so i started a couple weeks ago back studying and basically what happened was i started studying again things were going okay my son is in daycare now and um but he was only indeed but the problem is with daycare is your kids are just sick all the time because they're exposed to all these other kids you know so he was in daycare for like a week i got some studying done and then boom he's sick and he's home for a week so it's been really really frustrating um and you know i it is what it is but it's been very difficult to study so i think part of that distraction it has to do with why i didn't do as well as i certainly would have liked but it is you know but i also i just didn't prepare well enough or i didn't know how to prepare well enough um there we go so um yeah so anyway so because of all that uh the first thing i did when i sat down to study for the pc ap again a few couple weeks ago was to re-read the first third maybe a half of this book that kind of reinforced all the basics of python for me it's actually a really good book as far as programming books go this uh introducing python book from o'reilly it's you know look programming is a very dry subject the author does his best to make it entertaining obviously it's programming you know like he can only do so much but he still does a pretty good job of of making it entertaining and relatable so i do enjoy this book i highly recommend it and then obviously the the next thing i did was the uh python institute's own course now if you're not familiar with the course if you just go to the python institute website go to the pcap certification page scroll down a bit and courses align so here's a course available through cisco obviously this has not been updated in a while and then here is the two courses for the pc essentials part one is for the pcep essentials part two is for the pc ap so once you have that you can come over here and get a list you can you can pick the courses you want to do so i've completed essentials part one essentials uh two however be aware when you go to the website and you're deciding which course so essentials part two essentials part two there's a newer version i think it's listed here yeah see pc ap 3102 and 3103. so right now 3103 both of these tests are available i'm not sure why um but you want to do the the 3103 so this course with this sort of uh slate color i'm color blind so i'm not sure um that is for the 3103 it doesn't really say but it does say version two uh versus uh okay so version two so you probably want to do this this is the one you want to do um let's take a look so you know i went through the whole course and the one thing i want to point out here is my scores on these quizzes and tests 100 except for a couple which were in the mid 90s and then on the real test i got a 77 or 78 so that kind of gives you an idea about this course um the thing about this course and it's a good course like so i really highly recommend it it's perfect it's free it's completely free and it's recommend i think they say it as a 58 hour 58 hours to complete which when if you do all the labs it's probably pretty accurate uh you might be able to do it in less time than that depending on your experience level you know how much you can skim over but um it was probably pretty accurate so now one thing a couple things about this course um one the the practice questions were nowhere near the difficulty level of the actual exam which really frustrates me and i'll get to that in a minute and then two there was a lot of uh weirdness in this course it was very clear that what they did was they took the old course and they updated it the problem was the old course itself was had several errors in it typos errors things like that and they were all just replicated in this new course so i thought that was very frustrating you know what they don't have the time to properly test their own courses look i get it this is a non-profit organization they probably have a very small staff who have other full-time jobs you know they're probably doing the best they can i get it i appreciate all the effort that they are doing at the same time if your mission is to educate people on python they they need to step up their game a little bit um so so yeah so this is it's it's good there's definitely some problems with it but it's good if you have access to the cisco course maybe that one would be better i don't know um okay so as far as the actual exam and kind of what i learned from it the one big takeaway for me was that this python institute has very much a academic approach to their training material versus what i'm used to in career certifications so what do i mean by that well career certifications tend to be designed to help you get the certification so everything about it tends to be there are some exceptions there to actually help you succeed now most of my experiences with cisco and back in the day microsoft i comptia i i think has a different philosophy their philosophy is sell as much training material as possible so they actually make things more confusing and harder than they need to be but i but you know with cisco at least where i have the vast majority of my experience their training programs are very much like hey what do we need to do to help you succeed and while at the same time giving you a real training program and making sure their tests are are difficult so it's it's this really well-developed balance that cisco has achieved where they're helping you to get the certification and training you and they still maintain the certifications have real value because they are challenging and difficult that's like what i consider career certification appropriate this python institute was very much what i would consider like an academic approach where instead of being training focused it's more syllabus focused the test rather the test is more focused on the syllabus than on the actual training so the training is there to kind of give you the basics point you in the right direction but they expect you to then go do a lot of self study on your own to fill in the gaps that's not how most career certifications work in my experience with most career certifications you you do this you read the study material you do the practice tests and you know do the labs and you should be in a good position to take the exam with this python exam i did the course i did all the labs i did all the practice tests and i was not in a position to succeed i did barely succeed but just barely so i think what's happening here is you have these people they're kind of coming from rather than a career mindset they're coming from an academic mindset and you know i was telling my wife just a few minutes ago now my wife is she has an advanced degree from an ivy league school she knows academia far more than i ever will um but you know my experience i did i only attended university for one year one of the very first classes i took day one the instructor or professor i think it was a professor actually walks into the class and it's like straight out of a movie he's like okay look to your left look to your right one of those people will will fail by the end of this course you know he's so he has like this pride that he's failing people significantly a third of the class is going to fail and he has some sort of pride in that where me sitting in the classroom is like if a third of the people are failing maybe you're not doing your job you know isn't your job to to teach like aren't you here to help me succeed no his job in his mind was to make this as challenging and difficult as possible to weed out the the unworthy or whatever and i kind of feel it's a little bit not that bad but a little bit what's going on with this python institute rather than being like hey we want you to succeed it's more like hey we're going to point you in the right direction but you know we're also going to make it hard for you to succeed unless you're willing to do a lot of work on your own outside of what we supply for training material i'm not saying that's invalid i just feel like it's it's unnecessary like why do we need to weed people out why not just make training material that helps people pass the exam like if you if i need to know x y and zed why not teach me x y and z instead of just x and y you know what i'm saying like why leave stuff out how does that help anything i i just don't get it so it's just it's a different mindset it's a different philosophy so if you are studying for this you have to go based on the syllabus not based on or the exam objectives whatever it's called not based on the training material that was my mistake i studied based on training material and i fell short obviously i passed the exam but you know just for me from a feeling successful point of view i don't really feel particularly successful so that's really it there's not a whole lot to it 40 questions you had an hour to take it and i did it online with pearson so i just did it from my home and if you haven't done that before it's a pretty simple process you they they run a little app on your computer uh they send a link to your phone you download the app for the phone and then it asks you to take pictures of your surrounding take pictures of your desktop you have to have a webcam and take pictures of your id and all that and and a couple things of note it's all in you know read their fine print but you're only allowed to have one monitor so i have two monitors so i have to take one down in the past it's never been an issue i have like some knickknacks on my desk or you know just some junk laying around like i have stack of memory cards for my camera and stuff um or some couple thumb drives in the past that has never been a problem i think this is the fifth test i've taken now with pearson uh on you know from home and at this time though the proctor did not want anything on my desk like he made me take everything off like how is a as a compact flash card going to help me cheat like it doesn't i don't know whatever um so whatever that's that but you know okay so that's it um it's not a whole lot to say uh study do the course but then go through the syllabus and you're going to have to do some supplementary learning i can't even tell you specifically what it was i i do i could just say just follow the syllabus i think it's all there i didn't do that so you know don't be like me do better uh okay so i think that's it i'm jeremiah thanks for watching i hope you found this helpful and i'll see you next time

Channel: Jeremiah Wolfe

Views: 6,556

Rating: 4.9175258 out of 5

Keywords: Python, Certification, PCAP

Id: oc1QnwENxvg

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 17 2021