I passed the PMP exam which I took this week at a testing center. I prepared for and aced it while juggling a full-time job, a side hustle, Graduate School, and life.
-I started listening/ watching the PM Prepcast training in May.
-As much as everybody wants to stress enough the importance of reading the PMBOK, I did not finish it. It's too dry and I can't stay awake when reading it.
-I read Rita Mulcahy's book twice (cover to cover) and answered all the questions at every end of the chapter.
-I prepared my own flashcards.
2 weeks before the exam:
-I answered all 8 PMP exams simulator of the PM Prepcast.
-Took note of all the questions I got wrong and studied them.
-I took and studied learning quizzes of the PM Prepcast.
-I studied my flashcards.
2 days before the exam:
-I watched Ricardo Vargas' detailed and simplified explanation of the whole PMBOK process on his Youtube channel.
Lessons Learned:
1. Do not spend so much time taking detailed notes when doing any training (e.g. PM Prepcast). Absorb everything, instead. Understand why certain documents or tools are the outputs/ inputs or tools of certain processes. I never really had the time to re-read my notes.
2. Schedule your exam as early as you can. I kept on stalling it because I always tell myself I'm not ready yet until I realized that I have dragged it for so long.
3. 2 weeks before my target date, I still felt unprepared but, heck, I want the anxiety to be over already. So I scheduled my exam and stuck with my 2-week game plan.
4. Do not memorize everything but make sure that you have learned by heart the formula and some of the important definitions, at the very least.
5. Take in how and where work performance data is transformed to work performance info to work performance report.
6. Do not let your scores in Exam Simulator affect or discourage you. The questions in the simulator were different from the real exam (at least in my case), but it has helped me boost my endurance to last a 4-hour exam with 200 questions. Most of the questions in my real exam were 3 sentences long, and the choices were also equally long.
7. During the exam, there will be a 10-minute tutorial before the proper exam. I read it for 5 mins only, I used the other 5 mins for brain dump.
8. During the exam, I was seated in a room with other test-takers who were taking different exams and their keyboards were kind of noisy when typing, I requested earplugs. You can do it too when too much noise is distracting you.
9. FOCUS. Don't let overthinking defeat you.
10. Lastly, when you think you are losing it and you want to give up, remember and go back to the reason why you are taking it in the first place. That has fueled me and kept me going.
Good luck, champs! If we can do it, you can, too.
