I passed my CISSP exam! Last month I took a boot camp to prep for this test. It was really fun and intense – ran from 8am to 9pm + studying before and after the class.
The test covers a really broad area – everything from the details of encryption schemes to what type of fire extinguisher to use to put out different types of fires (!??!). In general, I felt good about the test (I tend to test well) but had a couple of panics – one the night before the exam, when I started going through a sample test a friend had sent me – and I didn’t know answers to a bunch of questions in a row. That one sent me back to re-reading the course materials the night before the exam. I finally quit at 11pm and took a bath and tried to get relaxed and centered so that I could get a good night’s sleep before the exam. Having Gus the dog at the hotel with me helped because I could pull my regular routine of waking him from a sound sleep, dragging him across the bed (while he growls at me) and making him cuddle with me (while he sighs).
Then when I showed up to take the test (they take this very seriously – there were 4 proctors for 15 of us, they carefully examined our photo & signature and compared them to our drivers licenses and each of us had a different exam), I didn’t know the answer to the first three questions on the test. I definitely started to panic at that point. But I just moved on and after I got into my groove and revisited those questions, it turned out that I did actually know the answer to two of them.
The class instructor was really helpful in providing tips for taking the test and focusing on what was most likely to be on the exam.
You have six hours to take the test – I finished in 3.5 hours (the longest it’s ever taken me to take any exam) and I was the first one done (I’m a really quick test taker). I made a big effort to go slowly and read carefully – I often miss questions because I skim or don’t read all the answers carefully. It’s a stupid reason to get something wrong.
And it worked! Very happy.
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4 comments:
Hooray! I haven't taken any tests since I got my Microsoft networking security certs, but this sounds like a much harder and longer test. Good for you!
Congrats Amy, it's a big accomplishment!
Yay!!! You go with your computer geek swooning bad ass self!!! Woot woot! As if there were any doubt you wouldn't pass. ;o)
Well done, and congratulations!
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