Learning

Hello folks,

Im currently going through the INE DC videos and learning a lot about fabrics and how they work along with a fair bit of UCS information on top of that!

Im spending an average of 2.5 hours on weekdays for study and a bit more in the weekends when time permits.

Wednesday the 22nd of February, in a testing center in the middle of London, my journey towards achieving the CCDE certification, finally ended in me passing this beast of an exam.

This learning journey was a very different one than either of my CCIE’s. Whereas going for the CCIE meant spending countless hours at the command-line, the CCDE meant spending all of those hours reading and discussing use cases for technologies. It also meant stepping my toes into the business side, picking up the “Why?” behind selecting a specific technology.

People often ask me why i keep studying and when i will be “done”.

To me, this type of question seems odd, because i am committed to lifelong learning.

I am of the opinion that going through life without learning something all the time would be a life wasted. I think this goes back to the early explorers. Discovering new things, whether it be a new continent or simply a piece of knowledge really excites a certain type of people.

Lately i have been making it a goal of mine to watch a TED video a day.

I do this in order to expand my horizon and learn things that i normally wouldnt pay much attention to.

Something as foreign to me as a music conductor explaining how to perform a piece of music, what it takes and why he does it, makes me a more informed human being.

Since starting my now almost infamous Cisco course, I have become very interested in ways to learn new material.

How do you plan out a semester, how do you organize a study schedule, where do you study? what kind of tools do you use to get you through it all?

In recent months ive re-experienced what its like to have a bad teacher.

Im currently taking a CCNA certification, and anyone who has taken one, know there is ALOT of material to go through. To have a good teacher help you with questions and problems would be a huge help. Unfortunally I am not in a position to say I have a good teacher.