A very long delay since the last post, I know.  But, I intend to make it up by adding content every few days for the next few weeks.

This is the third post in the series describing the experience of attending the Microsoft Certified Master course.  It covers the third week of our training, which was a bit different from the previous two. Where the best description for the volume of information we had to process during Week 1 was that it's like "trying to drink water from a fire hydrant" and that by Week 2 we learnt how to do that with a funnel and without choking, this week was all about managing what little time was left to prepare for the final exam and the dreaded Qualifying Lab.

Content

This week had the greatest variety of material, ranging from cross-forest scenarios to links with MOF, MSF and ITIL.  Four instructors covered the material in a series of very dynamic presentations.  As for three days, we had three of the four always in the room, it gave us the ability to draw on each of their strengths at any time.  Overall, the week was far more relaxed than previous two, which allowed us plenty of time to discuss any related topics, as well as to cover the possible next step in certification - Microsoft Certified Architect.  The picture on the right is a visual representation of identity management in heterogeneous environments.  You'll be able to impress your friends after learning about it as it includes terms like "metaverse".

Timetable Challenges

The start of the week was as the one before - we completed the Week 2 exam and went straight into new content.  Most of the days' lectures were finished by 17:00-18:00.  That was crucial as we only had evenings left to prepare for the Week 3 exam on the coming Friday and then  Qualifying Lab on Saturday.  The most critical thing here is that while we were doing the exam on Friday afternoon, the practice environments that we built over the previous three weeks were getting wiped and lab setup was loaded onto the virtual environment.  This pretty much left us with just our notes for Friday evening.  We knew this along and were constantly reminded of it by the four instructors of the week.  They must have thought we weren't stressed enough.

Share, Share, Share

Obviously, the instructors were doing this to ensure we managed our time accordingly.  But, in amongst that advice was also some guidance on how to prepare for the lab.  The whole lab experience will be in the next post - it is so brutal that it deserves its own post.  But, one thing I do want to mention here is that the direct effect of these offered pieces of wisdom was that 22 of us in the class all started to work together towards achieving our common goal.  On Wednesday evening, I think there must have been 18 of us (4 must have been on the sugar run to the canteen) developing a single shared One Note as our toolkit for Saturday's lab.  Lab is 'open book' so we were trying to come up with what we thought was going to be required of us during those six hours.  In short, the final week has definitely made us all work much more as a team.  Don't get me wrong, there was no problem sharing anything from day one, but this was on a much bigger scale and without any overt plan to do it.

Word to the wise future candidate: foster this in your class!  It definitely worked for us.

Exam

This week's exam was notably easier than previous two and everyone was grateful for it.  We were all focusing on the lab, anyway, so any greater a challenge would have been too much.  Have a look at the relaxed faces after the exam.  These were taken On Friday afternoon - class is over, three exams completed, only thing left... the next day's Qual Lab.

Instead of Conclusion

Next posts will cover the Qualifying Lab, introduction of the ten instructors we had in three weeks as well as some more random posts around the whole experience.  If you are interested in knowing more or something I didn't cover, please put a comment or use Twitter (easier) or Facebook (less time) to have a chat.  You can also always subscribe to the blog through RSS.