I went into the exam expecting to fail.
I made a social post in late July saying I would be taking an accelerated Network+ course. I was nervous after listening to the first Zoom meeting about how much time it would take and after looking at the course outline. I had one to two weeks to cover one of the five CompTIA Network+ objectives. That’s a lot of material for those who are not familiar with it.
With a full-time work schedule along a house of loving but noisy boys - a four-year-old and an infant - it was proving to be difficult to find the time to sit down and focus and not be sleep deprived. I fell behind. And what I did practice and quiz myself on, I was struggling with some concepts.
Then came prepping for and observing Hurricane Idalia as it got too close to home for comfort. Then the entire household got sick in the middle of September. When I am sick, my brain is like “nope.” In between the insanity that was life, I pressed on as much as I could. Honestly, I was never able to catch up to studying Objective 5, which covers network troubleshooting.
I took two different practice exams from different vendors. I failed both. The night before the exam, I took a practice test, saw the score, and went to bed early depressed.
I took the exam the next morning at a testing center. I saw stunned when I saw the score and “Congratulations!” To pass the exam, you need to get 80% of the questions and exercises correctly. I earned an 82.2%.
Maybe I know more about networking than I thought. Maybe getting a full-nights sleep helped to clear the head a bit. Maybe I just underestimated myself. Regardless, I did it!
I’ll be taking a break for 2-3 months, but the Security+ will come next.
P.S. Thank you to my wife who always believed I would pass it.
#IT #tech #network #networking #networkplus #comptia #computers #informationtechnology #cybersecurity #infosec #computernetworking #itsupportspecialist