So today I failed to achive a CCNA

What a depressing title for a blog. Why? That's a good question. Why did I fail it? Why am I blogging about it? Showing the world what I can't do? Well let's start with the first question, and see if it takes us to an answer to them all.

Why did I fail it? Because I didn't know the stuff. It's that brutally simple.

I don't think I'm that stupid. I've been "in the game" for a good 10 years. I've been responsible for networks for SMEs from 30 users and a single site, up to 400 users over 25 sites. I've done dialup in the US, and HSRP in the core. I've done all that whilst having to troubleshoot Linux, and Windows and AWS instances, and .... It goes on. It's not special. Thousands of people like me do this every day.

But I should have had a CCNA years ago. I wanted a CCNA years ago, and never got around to it. Recently I got the chance, and I jumped at it. I jumped too quickly. I picked the date. I perused some websites, and kidded myself I know what I was doing. Did you hear the thud this morning as I hit the ground?

Remember that guy in high school, who finished the exam in half the allotted time, and spent the rest doodling and writing out guitar tab? Then got an A? That was me. Not today it wasn't. 5 questions left with 00:00:00 on the clock. You can't argue with a computer's time keeping, but jeepers, did someone turn the clocks back early? I've read plenty of times about Cisco exams and time management. Nothing brings that home like checking how long you have to do this question, and seeing 10 bright red seconds turn to 9.....

What about the questions, surely I could answer them? Right? Well, almost it seems. The blueprint doesn't give any idea of the depth these questions go into. You really need to know this stuff backwards. That is the biggest, most important lesson I've learned today. I thought I knew this stuff. I've barely scratched the surface.

So now we are back to why I'm blogging about it. Einstein famously said that if you can't teach something to a 5 year old, you don't really know it. I do have a 5 year old test subject. But he'd get pretty bored of sub-netting, pretty damned quick (don't we all?). So I'm going for the next best thing: I intend to take the blueprint. I intend to take the topics one at a time and blog about them. If I can't make a sensible post about the point. I don't know it well enough. I intend to do the posts "blind", off line, closed book. Then check them after words and see where I went wrong. Finally I'm going to ask you. My imaginary friends who I hope read this to do me a favour. Pick the posts apart. Show me the nuance I'm missing, tell me when I'm outright wrong and haven't even noticed it, and hey, maybe we'll all learn something.