2023 Growth Story

This year was going to be the year that determined the direction of my life.

Whether I would continue a career in IT or go back to social media marketing and design depended on whether I could earn my CCNA.

And as you know, I trully got my CCNA. This article will tell you how it happened.

Together with preparing for my CCNA, I also had to start working on my thesis this year.

I need to have a strategy to split my time and energy between these two big tasks to finish it in only a year.

I divided my time between my thesis and CCNA 40:60, with more on CCNA. Because I realized I was starting to learn the IT world almost from 0, and there was so much to learn in CCNA.

Knowing I was only allocating 40% of my time to my thesis, I had to move quickly. I worked on my thesis in the morning, afternoon, and night—even staying up till midnight.

Long story short, little by little, I made significant progress on my thesis. Eventually, I reached the thesis defense in September.

You can probably guess what happened next. I passed it🔥

The thesis process went smoothly, but the CCNA was a different story🥴

My plan to pass the CCNA exam was simple: study all the material that would be tested, then do practice questions.

I finished all the ecourse videos I bought and also did configuration labs. Everything seemed easy.

But when I tried doing CCNA practice questions...

It was really hard 💀. I failed to reach the minimum passing score, many times. I used the questions online that were close to the real CCNA exam.

I never thought it would be this difficult. But I kept practicing because I had to pass. I didn’t have a backup plan for my life (or I didn’t want to have).

Slowly, I started getting closer to the passing score, and after a month, I finally scored above 80% 🔥. I started feeling more confident.

Finally, on November 24th, 2023...

So this is what victory feels like. The door to my career in IT finally opened 🥳.

My graduation was on November 26th, 2023, exactly 2 days after the CCNA exam.

So that’s been my goal from the start—pass the CCNA right before my graduation. I can say this is one of the biggest rewards for all my struggle during college.

With all help from Allah, I was able to pass it. Glory be to Allah, and all praise is due to Him.

After getting my CCNA and graduating, the battle wasn't over. In fact, this is just the beginning.

CCNA only opened the door for me to get a career switch IT. But having a CCNA actually can make getting a job as a network engineer easier.

That's true, I only needed less than a month to get a job offer right after graduation. The reason is CCNA.

Even though it was just for a small 2 weeks project for Christmas and New Year's, I believe this small opportunity will lead to much bigger ones in the future.

After all the hard work for graduation and CCNA this year, you might wonder, "How did I stay focused? How did I not get bored or tired with all the monotonous to-do-list over the year?"

Of course I bored, tired, and even lost focus along the way. The key is to set a target.

You need to have a strong will for your own goal. I didn’t have a second choice—I had to switch my career to IT. I should.

I can't fail, I should pass that exam. I'm afraid if I didn't pass the exam, I’d have to go back to my previous type of job, and I didn’t want that to happen.

That desire, will, and fear naturally pushed me to keep going, no matter how I felt.