FUD & testing

Fear Uncertainty Doubt

So I’ve passed 3 exams within last month - Czech Language one, ISC(2) CSSLP & Czech Realities. So I wanted to compare & share experience with each of those tests:

Czech Realities

It was the easiest from the 3. It’s mostly about memory. 300 questions total, 30 set of questions for a test. I had 3 days to prepare, and I made a mind map with all the topics. So level of uncertainty was very low. And on the exam day - as soon as I opened test and started reading questions - answers started automatically to pop up & within 1- minutes I was finished. There were 2 questions that I had doubt with, but that’s when logic had tuned in.

realies mindmap

Czech Language

That’s number 2 - again the type of tests are known (read, listen, compose, talk), the scope is plus minus also, uncertainty mostly came from the composing part where you did not know the topics that you had to compose your story on (for me it was bakery for quiz & 2 topics - “men are better drivers” & “smoking in restaurants”). Also the rush. Especially listen part where you had to quickly figure out correct answer (one of 4) . Probably till the moment I received the result I had a doubt if I passed.

ISC2 - CSSLP

For the CSSLP I started preparation roughly in September, and passed exam in the end of May.

I’m glad I took that journey - at the very start I confused Authentication & Authorization, had no idea about any standards & just the official way of doing things and had hard time explaining my manager what are XSS attacks.

Hardest one of them all, but everything. I’ve read 3 books, watched 3 video courses, created own wiki notes, mind maps, just to understand & store everything in head. You really need to either enable some kind of mnemonics (I in biba stands for Integrity) or have a good memory.

Most confusion came not from the information itself - most of that I had some kind of experience with, but with the test sets that were available - some of them have no logic, some obsolete, some of them were on need-to-remember basis, which I hated the most.

security mindmap

Common for all tests

What helped me - is just to come earlier before test, ‘explore territory’, calm down, just try to find those panic rush before you start the test. It’ll make life much easier if you can sit down and calmly read questions.

Also for professional exams - talk to examination center stuff beforehand and find out when there are the ‘calmest’ days - so you would be alone in the room without any noise and distraction. I’ve been told - that summer is the quietest time & start of the week is better. Never the friday of the month.

Also check out the COVID restrictions. I was lucky that my exam was in summer, where all covid restrictions were lifted, so I wouln’t have to wear a mask during the exam.

Also for professional exams - do some break planning. If there’s a 125 questions & 180 minutes - split those into a groups. I did:

• 60 questions
• break
• 40 questions
• break
• remainder 25 questions

For some exams with varied number of questions (like CISSP where you have 100-150 questions), this is a good approach.