Wednesday, August 19, 1998
I'm up at 6:00 a.m., which isn't unusual for a
workday. What's unusual is where I'll be working. Today isn't just any Wednesday
morning; today is the first day of Accelerated Certification Real Education
Workshops (ACREW) MCSE Boot Camp.
The ACREW headquarters is about 20 miles west of Denver, Colorado, nestled
in the trees at the end of a dirt road in the Rocky Mountains. The lodge that
houses the boot camp was once a stagecoach stop, later a brothel, and more
recently a bed and breakfast. Sitting on 10 acres of pine trees and old
stagecoach trails, the mammoth moss-rock and wood structure looks like a
mountain home for the Brady Bunch.
Previous attendees warned me that boot camp will be harrowing: Days will
start early and end late, and study sessions will be frequent and long. I'm just
hoping I have a strong enough networking and Windows NT background and enough
room in my skull to cram in whatever knowledge I need to pass the six tests that
Microsoft deems necessary to obtain an MCSE certification. With my lucky combat
boots strapped firmly in place, and caffeine slowly winding up the gray matter
in my head, I set out for the 16-day ordeal.
So far my class has only five members. We're studying for the Windows 95 and
Networking Essentials exams. Seven more classmates will join us later in the
week as we move on to other areas, including TCP/IP, NT Workstation, NT Server,
NT Enterprise Server, and Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0.
Taking only a 5-minute break every hour, we blaze through six chapters in
Microsoft's Win95 training manual. I'm taking notes, highlighting paragraphs,
tagging pages with multicolored neon tabs--whatever it takes to get the
information from the book into my brain.
Initially, I haphazardly tag pages that contain important information. After a while, the top and side of my Microsoft Press manuals look like they have a strange psychedelic growth on them. Eventually I learn to tag only the side of the pages, and I start labeling the tags with titles such as RAS, NetWare, and Muy Importante. This method is more organized and proves to be a great time-saver during study sessions.
The first day of class starts at 8:30 a.m. and lasts until 6:00 p.m. The group study session lasts until about 11:30 p.m., and I read until 1:00 a.m. One
day down, and 15 to go.