Well butter a cowpie and upchuck your beer, I just passed my PMP exam!
And so my weekend from hell is over.
As I mentioned in my Friday post, I decided to go for my PMP since I’m in this weird life transition. Having credentials seems to beat not having credentials in terms of opening doors when so many seem closed (and covered over with barbed wire and a “GO AWAY WE HATE YOU” sign). I foolishly left booking my exam until this past Friday, thinking (well, not thinking) that there’d be plenty of time to study for and sit the exam before it changed on September first. Wow, that was really dumb. There were zero openings at any of the test centres in my area for the entire month of August save one: today, Monday morning, at 9:00am. That gave me, let’s see…just over 48 hours to prepare, starting from nothing.
My brain? Is pudding.
I told a PMP-certified friend what had happened and she pretty much freaked out, sending me over every single study guide, Powerpoint or scan of handwritten notes she could get her hands on. She was very pessimistic that I’d ever pass, when I hadn’t even glanced at the source material yet. After reviewing some of the massive volumes that suddenly filled my inbox, I started to worry too.
Holy crap there’s a lot of stuff to know for the test! And I don’t even agree with some of it!
However, after spending two full days jamming ridiculous amounts of crap into my head, last night I washed my eyes out with broken glass and went to bed early. I figured by that point if I didn’t know the material, there was no point getting up at 4:00 the next morning, driving two hours to the test centre and taking the test exhausted.
The test proctor met me with frighteningly long incisors and not a hint of a smile in her eyes. She made me empty my pockets and then asked me to turn them out. She stared for a long time. I don’t think she ogled me for any fun or flattering reason…she was checking to make sure I hadn’t learned to write really, really small and put crib notes on my pocket lint.
I must say, I was very impressed with the testing centre’s ruthless efficiency. I had the sense that if I did poorly on the test they’d carve the gold fillings out of my mouth and melt them down to make pretty little PMI collector spoons. “Sorry about your marks. If you’d just step this way to the candidate purification lounge?”
And then of course came the test. 200 questions of “OMFG I didn’t see this shit in the study materials.”
Three hours later, I clicked “Grade Exam” and then waited. And waited.
And waited.
Finally, there was a flash on the screen! “Thanks so much for using the Prometric Test Centre! Would you like to complete a survey to tell us how awesome we are?”
NO I DON’T WANT TO TAKE YOUR FUCKING SURVEY! I WANT MY GODDAM RESULTS BEFORE MY CHEST EXPLODES!
*click*
“Congratulations on passing your PMP exam.” Blanket proficiency across the board, baby!
I haven’t felt so relieved in recent memory. As I left the exam room, the stunningly gorgeous exam proctor met me with beaming congratulations, and I wanted to give her babies right there next to the stack of PMI letterhead.
I PASSED! WOOOOO-HOOOOO!
