How I got into Red Hat, Part 2
When you get fired, it doesn’t feel good. It can weigh you down, deflate your self worth, and make you contemplate giving up and trying something else. You can spend nights not sleeping, worrying how you are going to pay bills, if you’ll ever get another job, and all manor of self conjured despair. Those things can happen, if you let them. I certainly let them happen to me. If I was going to get back on this horse, I had to do something. Something that was going to restore faith in my abilities and most importantly, faith in myself.
Derby, the Sr. Admin I worked under, suggested I get a Red Hat certification if I wanted to keep moving forward as a Linux Admin. Why Red Hat? At the time, Red Hat offered one of the most well regarded certifications in IT because its exams were practical exercises rather than multiple choice questions. It was hard to get, and you could not just study trivia to achieve it. Derby had a certification himself, a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE). He suggested that getting the certification would help me find another Linux Admin position in any company using Linux, Red Hat or not. So I cracked open a web browser, went to Red Hat’s website, and looked at their certifications page.
I was immediately repelled. On the website sat the prices for taking the training classes for Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT) and Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE), several thousand dollars each. I was unemployed and training classes were out of reach. The cost to take the test and the test only, was $400 an attempt at RHCT and $800 an attempt at RHCE. If I was going to do this, I was going to have to do it on my own. Sometimes in life, you get the sense that you have nothing left to lose and for me, I was there. While what I am about to tell you next may sound brave and heroic, it was also foolish, stupid, and desperate in hind sight. I wouldn’t change a thing.
The first mission was to tackle the RHCT. The RHCT was the entry level certification from Red Hat. Now it’s called the RHCSA. Every day I would wake up, make a pot of coffee, and follow along whatever I was learning in Virtual Machines (VMs). Back then, a computer could run 2, maybe 3 VMs at a time so between a laptop and a desktop I had my study environment. What I needed next was a deadline and so I prepaid for my seat to take the RHCT in February, giving myself little more than a month to prepare. Putting that money on my credit card brought back all the recent mistakes I had made, but there was no turning back. From that day until I took the test, I let my sleep schedule go and lost myself for hours in the work. In a way, working was soothing. At least, while I was buried in work, I had no time to worry about anything else but study for the approaching test.
The morning of the exam was very tense. Most people fail the first time, that was the idea echoing though my mind as I walked down Summer St. that cold February morning. Boston has a certain kind of cold in the morning once the sun comes up. You can be freezing and also blinded by the sun, every glare, every reflection feels like flash photography even with your eyes closed. The test was to begin at 9am, and I had arrived at the testing center with only 5 minutes to spare.
As soon as I was through the door, the exam proctor scolded me. I don’t remember much about the exam proctor himself, except that he was upset the test could not begin sooner and that I had kept both him and his student waiting. He explained that he had taught the RHCT class that week and the 5th day, Friday, is for the exam. Then the proctor asked me, had I ever taken a Red Hat class before? When I told him no, he seemed surprised. He wished me luck and told me I should consider it, and that I’d learn everything I needed to know like his student. His student was from Puma, the shoe and clothing company. Puma paid for his training, his class and exam. When I told the proctor about my efforts to self study with a laptop, the internet, some videos, and a handful of VMs, he just shook his head. I was angry! I may or may not pass this exam but heck this guy.
The proctor lead us into the exam room. There were only two of us taking the exam that day yet we sat very far apart. After getting settled, the details of the exam were laid out. It was a 2 part exam, the first half was pass/fail and the 2nd half had objectives to complete. He also explained how much was needed for a passing score. The timer began, and I got to work on my testing station.
When I finished, I walked over to the proctor’s desk and told him I was done with the first half. He asked me if I was sure because I could still use time to double check before asking me to wait out in the hallway. There were 15 minutes remaining on the clock until time was up. Then 10…then 5. Maybe the other student took that advice to heart to double check everything to the end. Then time ran out. I was expecting them to walk through that door any minute now. After 10 minutes had gone by, they had finally emerged from the exam room. I could see the student from Puma was sullen and being consoled by the proctor. I heard the proctor say “Take the 2nd half of the exam anyway, so you know for next time”.
Going back into the second half of the exam knowing that I had cleared the first hurdle eased my mind. By the end of the exam I was fairly confident I had done my very best but I may not receive a passing grade. There was a part about printers I skipped because I hate printers and still do to this day so I knew it was not going to be a perfect score. On my walk home from the train station I told myself that if I had just lit $400 on fire because I didn’t learn how to configure CUPS (Linux printing system) I was not going to forgive myself. Especially because a printer was involved. Shortly after I got home, something appeared in my inbox:
From: Red Hat Certification Central
Subject: Certification Lab Exam results
