Letters from the Equator

The Reason Why He Got Nearsightedness
Originally uploaded by Pumpkin Chief.

After hours of trial papers, festering, procrastination, bad dieting, and frustration over tricky questions, I finally got past my first ever major professional certification exam.

Thanks for everyone’s support and prayers and encouragement. It was definitely the input and help from my trainers, colleagues, family and loved ones that helped me to pass.

But that final but not least kudos goes to God’s grace, because I simply did not know how I managed to pass. But I did.

For those of you who don’t know what PMP is – it stands for Project Management Professional.

My former boss put us through this certification course in order to gain some good skills and training in order to better manage our projects, although we’re software engineers at base level.

The experience has been rewarding because I have greater sight of the work I am doing and am responsible for. In a way, I really am doing one-leg-kick work, but I have a bit more formal training in it.

To those who are preparing for PMP, it would be good to do your homework:

• lots of trial papers
• advice from people who have taken the exam (google it)
• the flashcard exchange website helped
• get the PMP red book (or something similar)
• register for PMP membership BEFORE purchasing for exam eligibility
• fix the PMP exam date, and don’t change it
• get a cheat sheet of formulas ready
• lots of rest before the exam
• don’t memorize every single thing

Like I said, I don’t know how I passed the exam. But I think it’s still good to prepare the brain for PMP-exam-mode. That way you can make better judgment calls on the answers. This is a good method for people who can’t memorize. And even if you do memorize, you can’t memorize every single thing.

Anyway, the certification doesn’t matter as much as the training. The experience itself has been quite invaluable. It’s both practical and rewarding, and I will put into practice a lot of the stuff I learnt.

That being said, after passing, I rewarded myself to a nice dinner at the Rib Shop with my wife and a bottle of Hoegaarden Grand Cru (yum). You should do something along those lines in order to regain a bit of sanity (I’m still not completely recovered) after the preparation and stress.