I was wondering if you can share your lab strategy and how it helps ensure you. I find myself getting stuck on some non required tasks that I can leave for the end but I keep hamming away. How do you move on?
I was thinking about doing what is required and what I know I can do is a short amount of time. I try to do this when I am practicing. I don't run to the solution guide. I shoot right over to the doc cd. I find the solution and I make it work, BUT even though it works I stay with it until I understand it. This is great because I am learning but not so great when you are trying to complete a timed lab. I can get stuck on a non required task because I am so afraid to leave it for the fear of missing the points and not being able to make up those points. I hammer away while the clock is ticking and I am wasting my brain power. After some labs I am so spent from tackling these little issues that I don't want to think anymore and we all know that the little issues add up and can cost you the test. This worries me the most because I fight how I train, what I mean is that I will fall back on my training and hammer away during the test. What if I do not have time to go back. Some people are fast I am slow constantly thinking things through again and again. I spend a over a year of hard dedicated studying and my head is all over the place when I am frustrated and can't solve a task. This frustrates me knowing I must have covered a similar task in the past. I just do not remember it. I went over how everything works many times. I know it but it does not come to mind right away. Sometimes I have to calm down and then I can start to put the process together on how somethings work. I think I need a anti anxiety pill, but they put me to sleep even when taking adderal for add. I take my vitamins and fish oil. Here is my process 1- read the lab while creating a task tracker. I note down various issues I see right off the bat like OSPF VL 0/1, etc.. or EIGRP over FR - split horizon?, MLS - ip cef . Just something very short to remind myself that something might be amiss later on when I am frustrated and can't get something to work or I know if I do this it will break something else. 2- I take a look at the diagram and I sho show cdp nei on the switches then I create my own layer 2 diagram. I check and double check this against the diagram (vlans), cdp and sho inter status. I am paranoid about my access ports and trunks( I know I might not have the trunks set up yet and I scan the cat section to see what I will need) 3 - I note how many loops I see which reminds me to turn on debug ip routing. 4- For multicast I right away assume there is an RPF failure and jot RPF on my tracker. 5- I leave a space for tclscrip - so I do run it and not skip it when the heat is on. 6- I open up note pad and I type out my alias' - I leave this open for the duration of the lab and remove them before the lab is graded. 7- While running through practice labs I configure a solution that works but even though it works I remove it and try another one if it comes to mind. This kills my time and always run out of time. So thinking about this I think I will second guess my solutions during the lab. 8- I leave some hard security task for last because I have lost almost all my points configuring a task incorrectly and breaking just about everything. 9- I do a sho run and check the diagram against the config. 10 - I do my frame and cat then I go through each device and make sure I can ping everything in my local subnet and my local ip address. If the lab does not mention anything about pinging the local ip I configure it anyway. Thinking about this maybe ping 255.255.255.255 would be faster here. 11 - I also like increasing the history to the maximum size.I do this to see what I have changed aka broke and what I had before. Maybe I should copy the initial to notepad just in case. 12- I wr mem after every task. That's all I can think of. -- - "The more I learn the less I know". This is incredibly frustrating to me.
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