I just earned my Network+ certification! This post is another step on documenting my journey towards earning my bachelor's degree in Network Operations & Security at Western Governor's University.

Despite having a networking background, this was a much more difficult class compared to the A+ classes for me. I tried cramming on CertMaster Practice but was easily overwhelmed by the amount of different terms I had to memorize, so I glanced over CertMaster Learn for the sections I was having difficulties with. I performed all of the practice quizzes and PBQs on CertMaster Learn before going back to CertMaster Practice to test myself. For topics I just couldn't understand after reading I used Professor Messer on YouTube.

Seriously - shout out to Professor Messer for all of his stellar content. The subnetting methods he talked about in his series finally enabled me to do it on paper. My cisco instructor at my last school taught us how to do it and it never clicked for me, so this was a nice change of pace.

All in all, after taking a break for the holidays, I spent around two weeks on this class. I passed my assesment on the first attempt with a score of 798/900. Much higher than I originally anticipated since I was seriously stressing out for the couple of days leading up to the exam!

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Just wrapped up the second portion of my CompTIA A+ certification. This was another relatively easy one - it covers some of the more difficult topics of A+ - namely operating systems, security procedures, software troubleshooting, and operational procedures.

I started off scoring 75% this time around and felt like more of the questions were coming out of left field for me compared to the first exam. Similarly to the first A+ class, I felt the practice exams were more difficult than the actual certification exam.

I passed the second portion of the A+ with 820/900 and earned my A+ certification!

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Another class down! I just wrapped up C393, which covers the first portion of the CompTIA A+ certification. The Core 1 portion of the A+ exam focuses on mobile devices, some basic networking skills, computer hardware, some basic virtualization, cloud concepts, and hardware troubleshooting. This class was pretty easy for me to knock out since I have nearly a decade of experience with computers and providing support to end users.

I started by taking a practice exam in the CertMaster Practice tool included with my tuition - I scored an 85% but wanted to go over some of the study material to make sure I knew what I was going to be asked on the actual exam. I know Professor Messer says that there aren't any "gotcha" questions on CompTIA exams but the questions are worded in a way that will cause you to get them wrong if you don't read them carefully - so make sure to do that. After it's all said and done, the practice material is substantially more difficult than the actual exam, in my opinion. I was scoring around 90% on the practice exams before I took the actual exam.

This was my first experience working with PearsonVUE for remote exam proctoring. I had a good experience with my proctor - they asked me to show that my second and third displays were physically disconnected, and then asked me to pan around the room for them to verify I was alone. After that, they wanted the webcam at eye level facing me - not on a tripod aimed at my screen / keyboard. The proctor was friendly and I only had to wait for a few minutes to have the exam released.

I scored and 829 out of 900 on my exam! WGU took a few days to update my degree plan to reflect my pass, but I was able to begin studying immediately after passing the exam.

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