Week 17 - And Then There Was One

 

Alas, my poor study group is no more.  It is down to just one - me.

I can appreciate the reasons the others gave for leaving the group.  Not only are there a lot of high profile initiatives taking place, there has also been a lot of turnover, recently, leaving the rest of us to fill in the gaps without a lot of time for personal study.  In any case, when they do decide to pick things up again, they will at least have the study resources we were able to pool for our meetings.  I just hope they can make time for it before the exam changes, sometime next year I believe.

Speaking of the exam, I finished and submitted my application tonight! YAY!!!  I would celebrate, but I am too tired right now from staring at the computer and filling out the application.  I can finally get back to studying.

For those of you just starting out in the world of project management, I am going to remind you, again, to track your PM time and effort as if you were filling out the exam application, even if you are not sure whether or not you are going to take it.  It may seem like extra work now, but it will save you time in the long run.  Filling out everything in my Access database helped me find some minor issues I will be fixing, and some typos I need to correct, but overall, being able to copy and paste everything from Access to the application made it go pretty smoothly.

My target date for taking the exam has slipped a few weeks, as a result of having to track down and review old project information.  But the application is in, now.  Whew!  I think I'll wait to celebrate until I get the results.

Now that it is just me studying, I might have something new to write about every three weeks.  I'll make an exception and post a little sooner, once I hear back from PMI.  Assuming everything is approved, I will schedule my exam (most likely December) as soon as I hear back from them.

BTW, job hunting and preparing for the exam at the same time is NOT fun.