Edmund Mansia, CCIE #35759

My CCIE Journey started in Nov of 2009. I decided to go through the CCNP certification route to prepare for the CCIE Written Exam. On March 2010 i purchased the CCIE R&S Ultimate bundle and used the CCIE Written Exam Videos and Cisco Press book to pass the Written Exam. I then went the route of completing my own lab gear according to the INE topology. After taking 2 weeks to do lab1 of Workbook vol 2, I was a bit discouraged and at the same time while making a career change, I lost focus on my Lab preparation. Petr Lapukhov's 12 month study plan i was following was quickly turning to a 24 month plan. I decided to take a 3 month leave from work that turned to be a 5 month leave to study (very kind of them to let me). During this time i had compressed Petr's 12 month plan by labbing almost Daily and doing 90% of WB Vol1, All of Vol2 (repeating Labs 1-10 twice), All of Vol3 (My favorite because its fast and sweet), All of Vol4 and 3 graded mock labs. After this i felt confident taking my first lab attempt. Unfortunately I was beaten on the Tshoot section but was very pleased with the level of knowledge i gained going through all the INE material. I went back to work definitely a better engineer. After practicing more on troubleshooting, I went for my second attempt in 2012 and passed! Thanks to INE for their excellent material and all the members of IEOC for their contributions! Now I have just recently purchased the CCIE Voice Budle and looking forward to going through Mark Snow's 12 month study plan.