CHECKiT tests and Don Juan

On Thursday I shall do a NMC CHECKiT to see if I have made any progress over the last few weeks.  I am apprehensive.  Every time I do a CHECKiT, I start off confident: “I think I have finally cracked it.”  Every time, something crops up in the test to throw me off course.  (I cannot go into detail because, understandably, there is an NDA to be respected.)  This time I am confident, as usual.

I am going to change my strategy slightly this time.   One thing I shall do is to stop doing any labs for the two days before the test.  Last time, I lost a few points stupidly ‘cos I got confused between the DOiT labs I was currently following and the CHECKiT test.  I was imagining some general constraints in the CHECKiT test that simply were not there.  (You know, of the “no ip default-network”, “no 0.0.0.0/0 route”, “no policy routing” type.)  Of course, if a general constraint is usually there but is missing from the particular lab, that is a pretty fair indication you will need it somewhere.  Is that strategy tantamount to cheating?

The other thing I am going to do will look like cheating myself, but I shall try not to make it so.  I have a problem with time management.  I start reading the scenario, but my fingers get so itchy that I start configuring stuff before I know properly what I am doing.  I have a problem with self-discipline.  So this time I intend to open the scenario one hour before my official rack start time, and stop one hour before the end fo the official rack time.  In that way I will be forced to spend an hour reading the scenario.  I shall have to stop early anyway ‘cos I have to pick my son up from school near the end of my rack time.

So, no labs this evening.  Instead, I spent part of the evening trying to follow Richard Strauss “Don Juan” from the score.  My wife has to write an essay about it.  I cannot help her with the essay (for obvious reasons, and also because such an analysis is anyway outside my mindset).  But at least I can help follow the music on the page.  It’s a good way of re-booting the brain ready for Thursday.