Rob Farley

Rob Rob Farley has been consulting in IT since completing a Computer Science degree with first class honours in 1997. Before moving to Adelaide, he worked in consultancies in Melbourne and London. He runs the development department in one of Australia's leading IT firms, as well as doing database application consultancy and training. He heads up the Adelaide SQL Server User Group, and holds several Microsoft certifications.

Rob has been involved with Microsoft technologies for most of his career, but has also done significant work with Oracle and Unix systems. His preferred database is SQL Server and his preferred language is C#. Recently he has been involved with Microsoft Learning in the US, creating and reviewing new content for the next generation of Microsoft exams.

Over the years, Rob's clients have included BP Oil, OneLink Transit, Accenture, Avanade, Australian Electorial Commission, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Royal Borough of Kingston, Help The Aged, Unisys, Department of Treasury and Finance (Vic), National Mutual, the Bible Society and others.

Did you mean to come here? My blog is now at http://msmvps.com/blogs/robfarley



27 January 2006

Exams... would 2/7 be okay?

I was thinking about these beta exams. I shouldn't think about exams after I've done them - I always work out that I've probably failed them, and this time is no different. I really probably have failed most of them. I didn't study nearly as much as I would've done for a proper exam, and some of them I came out knowing that I had guessed (educated guesses, mind you) for way too many of the questions.

So it got me thinking about what kind of result I would be happy with. I sat 7 exams in total so far (4 upgrade exams in March to come). 4 SQL exams (Nov 30, Dec, 2, 14, 16), and 3 .Net exams (Dec 20, Jan 17, 25).

The more I think about the exams, the less sure I am I passed them. But then I need to take into consideration the fact that I know I react this way, so I probably haven't done as badly as my mind is telling me. It's not that I'm pessimistic, or self-deprecating. Actually, it probably is that I'm self-deprecating. It's one of my faults. I might be a little pessimistic, but I'll improve on that in time.

So... I probably passed somewhere between 1 and 5. I'm sure I didn't pass the one with all the WSE3.0 questions, and there's no way I passed all the rest. Let's take the pessimistic view (ok, I need a bit more time than that, don't be unrealistic!), and suppose that I passed 2. Is that enough?

Well, 2 exams gets me, well, not much. But it does get me 2 vouchers to take other exams. And I know a lot more about what to expect from the various exams anyway. I probably won't get a hat from Andrew Coates again, but that's fine. And I'm sure I have more brown hair than I would've if I had studied (and stressed) a lot about the exams that I did.

I just added the WSE3.0 link - why does the MSDN library still use Classic ASP?

Posted by Rob Farley at 3:39 pm