Marina L Ferreira, CCIE #22094

After passing my first CCIE lab exam back in 2008 for the R&S track, I decided to take some time off and enjoy some well-deserved overseas. After a while, I realized I was missing some of that thrilling again, but did not take any meaningful action about it, and continued to give priority to other challenges as they were knocking my door. It worked for quite some time, up to 5 years to be more specific, and then I ended up convincing myself a few months ago to start another CCIE journey. Yes, this is a journey as some of you may know, and as any other journey you have to really be in it and enjoy it at all times, otherwise you miss some of the joy. It is not easy to keep focus, it is actually a continuous fight with yourself, and this is what makes the road so more interesting. It is one of those things you can hardly wait for and once in a while you picture yourself at the end of the road, getting your pass. This simple 4 letters makes your world spins around for as long as your imagination allows, and that feeling is what brought me here again. I just achieved my second CCIE lab exam for the Service Provider track, and on my first attempt, and cannot find enough words to describe my excitement right now ;-) I spent the last 6 months reading and practicing workbooks, and before I started doing any practice I watched all v3 videos. To me, the videos were 50% of my studies because they are extremely valuable. Brian has this amazing way of teaching every detail of every individual technology. The videos are a must see. I also joined his SP bootcamp in Chicago because I wanted to close some potential gaps a week before my lab attempt, and also to have a chance to actually practice XR commands. I did not have enough resources to build XRv for my studies so I used only IOS and ?notepad? as my imaginary XR. So, this was my story. A lot of dedication and focus, is all any of us need. Thank you!