I feel like I’m new at this again.

When I made a decision, almost ten months ago, that I will pursue this whole Cisco certification thing, I wanted to make sure that I set the stage right. I was going into the new year strong and motivated. My mindset had to have been made when I started. I will have had the right equipment for labbing up my lessons. And most importantly I wanted a solid study plan.

Getting myself motivated was easy. It didn’t take a lot of convincing that this is the right path for me. I’ve known for a while now that network engineering is what I wanted to do and be good at. I just needed to get myself in gear and actually start the “real” learning process as opposed to learning on the go; learning whatever technology I came across in my daily job without knowing what I will come across to the next day. This time a decision just had to be made and I made it. So that was easy.

I set my timetable to start at the beginning of the new year - seems like the most convenient way to make an excuse for a new year’s resolution. I ordered my books, hit them hard and I was rolling. along the way I accumulated several pieces of hardware for my lab. I was rolling. I spent the first few months “feeling out” a good flow for my study schedule - what works, what doesn’t, what’s under-achieving and what’s over the top. I finally setteled in to a good rhythm with my study plan. Everything was clock work and I think it worked very well for me.

As I went through the ICND1 and ICND2 materials, I slowly developed a good strategy. And by the end of my CCNA journey, I felt comfortable with my methods. I began my BSCI preparation basing most of my strategies on my previous experience wiht the last two tests. Why not? They seemed to have worked well for me and I formed a comfortable and familiar habit.

Now, almost a month into my BSCI studies, I couldn’t be any more wrong about my assumptions. Things aren’t “rolling” as they should and I’m already way behind my reading schedules. I’m slowly realizing that the approach I took on my CCNA studies might not be well-suited for the CCNP.

For example, at the same point in time when I did ICND2, I was already 300 pages deep into my reading and seven chapters into the book. Now, with the BSCI, I have read only about 180 pages and only midway to chapter 4. So I started thinking about why I don’t feel comfortable with my schedule yet and why things aren’t going the way I expected. I have come to several conclusions:

1. Sometime around the end of my CCNA test and the first few days of studying for BSCI, I subconsciously decided that I would get more in-depth with learning the technologies involved in BSCI. This was somewhat a reaction to the general design of the tests themselves; The CCNA tended to focus on broad and general skill sets, therefore, my approach was learning a broad and general understanding of the technologies. The BSCI goes more in depth with routing technologies, and accordingly, my approach is to go deeper into each section of the technologies covered in the routing track.
2. I miss Wendell Odom! Six months reading two books, three times, by Wendell Odom; I got so used to his style of writing and book format that I could never get used to the new ones I’m using. Adjusting to the new books as well as using a lot more supplementary resources is slowing the process down.
3. Supplementary Resources. I’m really going out of my way to find other sources of information for the subjects I read. Mostly, I go to the cisco web site and try to get used to the layout and format of the DocCD (I still don’t have a good clue how that darned maze is organized). You may (or may note) have noticed that I’ve been putting resource links to most of my posts lately. I try to do that to “back-up”) what I’ve read so far and to make sure that what I’ve read is confirmed by another source. So in essence, even though I’ve read only 180 pages of texts from my study guide, I have, in actuality, read a lot more than that when you can’t the pages of texts I read from other sources.
4. I started writing my formal notes earlier. When I was studying for CCNA, I would first read the book all the way through, while taking very light notes (such as jotting down key words, highlighting important concepts on the text, etc). Then I would read it the second time while taking very detailed notes. And on the review phase, I would read the book again while referencing and comparing it with my notes to make sure understood what I wrote from what I read. This is the time I would also throw in outside sources. But this time I sort of changed what I’m doing for the sake of getting more in depth with my approach. I started taking notes on the first read, and also started supplementing my reading on the first pass. My goal is by the time I start my second pass on the book, I would have nearly mastered the concepts and it will feel like a review. Previously, the first reading didn’t allow me to retain much knowledge and the second reading felt like I was reading the book for the first time. This time I’m hoping it won’t feel that way.
5. I recently landed a rare opportunity at work where I can start working on our routers. We are in a state of transition where we are dropping all our internet circuits and ordering new ones. With that comes a lot of opportunity to get involved with the project. And because I’m the only one in our team of 3 that has a CCNA, my boss, who holds an expired CCIE “lightly” suggested that I may want to take the challenge of reconfiguring our site-to-site vpn/gre tunnels that he created but wasn’t particular happy about - because it was too messy, he says. The only problem is I have no idea how to do it. So for the last week, I’ve been studying ISCW materials, reading all about DMVPN, and trying to learn as much as I can so the boss can let me be the guy that primarily maintains the network. I’ve been asking him this opportunity for so long and I’m finally getting my chance. So I don’t want to blow it. And if while immersing myself in this process causes me to delay my BSCI studying, so be it. This opportunity, I believe, will allow me to increase my exposure and knowledge, thus adding experience in dealing with routers and WAN technologies that I can transfer anywhere I wish later on.