It has been a busy several months between school and the family but I made the commitment that immediately after exams I would take a deep hard dive into ITIL v4. Getting the foundation level ITIL certification was always a goal for me, though I have to admit I did value it a little bit lower than my other more technical certifications, but ITIL did hammer home important points about how you should view your role in IT services. The goal after all is to create value, regardless of your position in the company.
The Study Plan
It worked out that I had about 3 weeks of time from the end of my exams one semester to the start of the next semester in January. Unfortunately the entire 3 weeks wasn’t exactly viable with Christmas, New Years, and various family gatherings to attend so I had to really make good use of the time that I had. That doesn’t mean of course that I particularly wanted to cram exam answers into my head either, I would rather take longer and understand the material than rush through it. My first objective was to read the official ITIL Foundation textbook by AXELOS. Realistically it was just over 200 pages in length of actual content but it was very dry content. I had to split up the material into digestible chunks and spent a full week working my way through it.
I also purchased Jason Dion’s ITIL v4 Foundation Udemy course and read the study guide before completely finishing the text book. I found this actually gave me more context when it came to reading the rest of the book and made it easier to work through. I tackled the video’s shortly after, though my time lines get a little bit hazy here between the family gatherings and my studying. Whenever I had a spare moment I’d fit in a couple training videos, maybe read a little bit of of the study guide again. This made up most of my 2nd week.
I took my first practice exam on Udemy and scored reasonably well so I decided to book my exam about 5 days ahead…
The Unexpected
Shortly after booking the exam I came down with a horrible stomach flu. This was pretty disruptive because during the coming days the idea was to work on practice tests and address weaknesses in my knowledge. I purchased the official mobile app so I was able to lay in bed and do some flash cards. For the morning of the exam I felt a little bit better so I woke up early to go over the practice tests, do some additional flash cards. The online proctoring service is pretty neat so long as you have a fast enough internet connection and a decent webcam. Overall the process was pretty simple and I was writing the test in no time.
What Now
Ultimately everything worked out OK and I’ve added another certification to my pile. I am starting to feel a little bit of certification fatigue and it does take a little bit of a toll when it comes to family and friends. I’ll be working on an eLearnSecurity certification called the eJPT (junior pentester) but i’ll be taking my time on it. My voucher is good until May so I don’t feel rushed. I also really want to work on programming, particularly with python.
Until next time!
-Ian