Wow. . . .

What. A. Day!

Just coming from my first attempt at the CCIE written. I passed! Unreal feeling!!

I’m not going to sit here and say that it was easy. It wasn’t, it was definitely challenging. I didn’t have the answers to what seemed like many of the questions.

It was such a odd feeling, I had an understanding of everything that was asked on the test, yet I didn’t have a surefire answer. It left me nervous for most of the test.

I had written down some reminders for myself on my white board before starting my test..

• Trust your gut!
• Read the question and answer thoroughly!
• Take your time!
• Process of elimination!
• BGP well-known/optional/transitive attributes (for some reason I had this in my head and wanted to get rid of it so I wrote them down)

Now the above points, they may be obvious, but I needed a reminder. I wrote them down which oddly calmed me.

Q1..Submit..Q2..Submit..Q50..submit

I was zoned in baby!

Clock check ..64 minutes left..Okay, i’m making good time.

Q70..Submit..Q90..Sumbit..Oh, man hearts racing again, finish line is near!

“Are you sure you want to end your exam?”..ya I guess

Waiting..Waiting..Waiting..BAM!

“Congratulations!”

I’m not even going to lie, I did shed a tear. What a relief!

I walked out of the testing center yelling “LET’S GO!!!” “LET’S GO BABY!” “WOO!!”

I’ve put in a lot of work and the payoff seems so great. Yeah this is only the written and doesn’t actually mean anything but it most certainly does. It means that I’m following a process. The process is key to success. Forget about the overall goal. Put in the work, day in and day out. There is no choice, there are no excuses.

I will take a bit to enjoy this win, but not long!

Mike