Current Events > Godnorgosh, did you get your CCENT certificate in the mail yet?

(+) Yeah! (+)

@Godnorgosh
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Godnorgosh posted...

I know I've taken a very long time to get started, lol. The class took a long time, although I don't regret it because I felt I needed a good foundation to get started. But then I realized that I still needed to review on my own before I'd be ready to take the exams.

I'm definitely going the self-study route for all my other certs. The difference now is that I feel prepared to do it on my own.

It took a long time for me to even get serious about studying at all. I kinda wish I had taken classes to kinda force myself through the beginning stages.

From about 2010 - 2012, I was always saying "Man, when I get Cisco certified, I'm outta here." Never actually got serious about studying. I'd watch some CBT Nuggets videos, then stop and then forget everything.

Then in late 2012, I actually got hired at a NOC. A guy I worked closely with got hired about a month after me, but attempted the CCENT exam and failed about 6 months into that job. He later got promoted to network engineer while I was still stuck in the NOC. I then decided to get serious about studying on my own.
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Godnorgosh posted...

Wait, he failed the CCENT and still got promoted? The heck? lol. Or did he pass later?

He never passed the CCENT, but he was promoted to a "junior network engineer" position where he was initially just doing basic things like basic router configs (setting IP addresses, router names, NAT configuration, etc.) and config templates for more advanced things. He leaned heavily on the senior network engineers for help with stuff. Otherwise, he's the kinda guy who can dive in and learn stuff as needed. He was still kinda rough around the edges and would miss some things in network designs, but he did really well with circuit turn ups and basic router configs.

He was pushing heavily for getting scripting and automation for a lot of the things he did with network implementation, but it never became a thing. Most of the other guys, me included, preferred to just do things manually for the most part.
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A lot of the things we did in network implementation could very much be "templatized" so that you only have to change IP addresses, router names, and some other basic things to get the router and switches ready to ship, but... There are some things you still need to understand like spanning tree.

He once shipped a customer's network equipment without thinking about spanning tree configuration, so the wrong switch was the root bridge when the customer was actually using the network. I ended up fixing that.
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