Okay - so tonight was all about tunnels. I worked on a few exercises. By the end of the night, I didn't want to stop. But I knew I was getting tired and wasn't going to get much more out of it.
I'm getting a little frustrated with the workbook. It is what it is, but it's a little different from the way I think. I didn't even realize this until tonight. One of the frustrations is that the exercises are iterative rather than cumulative. At work, we're used to building something. We put this up. Then we add that. Then we need to reconfigure this to do that. With the workbook, you're setting this up. Then you need to 'undo' what you just did and do it another way. Granted, this will probably help for the test, but it's hard to figure out how much of what you just did needs to be undone to do the next exercise. On top of that - I was a bit eager to start. I didn't really clear off the previous configs on all the devices. So sometimes I have to go over and over and over it until I find out why following the steps in the workbook doesn't exactly come out right the first time. But, in a way - that's helping me to learn too. I'm finding out what has to match up and where I left off and just how much needs to be done to get it to work.
I'm looking forward to doing the whole labs, but I realize I'm not at that point yet. I'm still re-sharpening skills and getting a deeper understanding of some of the things I'm doing. It's all good. And I'm sure the troubleshooting practice will come in handy later...
I guess the biggest thing I'm learning is : patience with myself.
Posted by BlueWolf on February 11, 2010 10:46 PM