I'm totally wracked. I was up till 3 last night studying, tried to
catch 4 hours sleep and resume at 7 but the damn cat started howling
at 5am. That woke me up, and with all the coffee I had the night
before, I couldn't get back to sleep. I can't imagine how bad that
cat would be if it still had it's balls. I hammer-tossed the cat in
the direction of Canada and got back to studying some more.
Thank god for him, though. I had a feeling I needed to really review
automated/unattended installs. I was feeling hazy on that stuff and
as it turns out, half the test focused on it.
Well, I just finished taking the MS Windows XP exam. I guess I really
underestimated this test. I know there were a lot of "paper" MCSEs in
the
NT4 days but I don't think that's gonna be the case anymore. This
test was
HARD.
I picked up a cram book and it did an OK job. It was 430 pages and I
went
though it in about seven days. Last night and this morning put
together I
spent about 9 hours reviewing and taking practice tests. So basically
about
50 hours total.
The test really went into a lot of depth, though, and the cram book
just
scratched the surface. I'd be reading a question and thinking, "okay,
I
know where they're going with this, I know what the solution will be".
Nope. Every single question was tough. There wasn't a single
"gimme".
Each question would intentionally discard the obvious answers or give
scenarios where the most common solution wasn't applicable, so you
have to
know all those backwater voodoo solutions. There *were* a lot of
real-world
scenarios but they were the kind you would typically approach in real
life
with a trial-and-error methodology. Obviously, that isn't an option
on a
test. You had to be able to mentally troubleshoot a minimum of three
steps
ahead. It was crazy.
It was 50 questions and I finished with about three minutes left on
the
clock. I had enough time to review two questions and then got peaced
out to
the "Printing Report" screen. Passing score was 700 and I got a 737.
Doesn't get any closer than that. Guess I got rethink my strategy
going into the core exams.