My MCM Exam Experience

“You know that I can ask you any question I want today, right?”

The man asking the question was one of my professors at Washington State University. I had asked him to serve on the committee that would conduct the oral exam at the end of my second year. If I passed I earned my MS in Mathematics. If I didn’t pass, well…no one ever told me what would happen. I assumed I would get to try again at some point.

“You mean any question regarding my project, right? Sure I know that, not a problem.”

I was referring to the project that I had put together. The math and astronomy departments at WSU at that time were combined, so I chose a project that involved a little bit of both. The project title was “The Interstellar Radiation Field of Globular Clusters” and it involved some research, some math, some computer programming, some astronomy, and I had to present it to a room of about 15 people including the three professors that were to conduct my exam immediately afterwards.

[By the way, if you think presenting to a chapter group or SQL Saturday room is difficult, you should try spending over a year of your life putting everything together for a 30 minute talk and having that talk decide whether the last two years of your life were a complete waste. Also, don’t invite your fiancee to the talk because chances are he/she will ask a question despite the fact that if you don’t know the answer you could fail the exam. I’m just sayin’ that if you invite them you should remind them that silence is golden.]

“No, I mean I can ask you any question, from any course you have taken over the past two years. I can pick up any textbook, open to any page, and ask whatever I want. Nobody told you this?”

I was stunned. Nobody had told me that. Nobody had told me anything even close to that. But with six hours to go before the exam, it didn’t matter at this point.

“Bring it on,” I replied, guessing that he was mostly bluffing, “you ask the questions and I’ll answer them.”

I don’t remember many of the questions they asked, save for one or two. After they were done they asked me to step outside and after what seemed to be a very long time my adviser came out and said simply “You passed.” To this day I suspect the vote was 2-1, but I never bothered to ask. I had passed, was handed a little 3×5 piece of paper to turn in to the main office, and within a few weeks I was mailed my diploma. I had become a Master of Sciences in the field of Mathematics.

And it felt good.

Microsoft Certified Master Program

Fast forward a few years later and Microsoft has a new certification program, the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM). I was very excited to participate in this program except for a few minor roadblocks. First, the cost (roughly $20k). Second, the need to live in Seattle for three straight weeks (more $$$ ON TOP of the $20k). That was going to put a strain on me and my family. But before I could even have a chance to participate I needed to bring my current certifications up to date. In the span of about ten weeks late last year I took three exams. One exam was to complete my 2005 certifications and the other two were upgrade exams. I finished those in time to be eligible to enter the March rotation for the MCM program.

And then my former company said they wouldn’t sponsor me. Quite simply they weren’t a software vendor so they felt it didn’t make sense for them to sponsor me. I wanted to be in the March rotation and even told them to keep their money, but would they have a problem with me taking the three weeks off to go? I was going to pay for the exam out of my pocket, because I believed in it so much. To this day I have not received an answer about taking the time off. [I don’t expect I will ever get one].

So I waited. I had heard that there were going to be some changes to the MCM program. I waited to see what they would be. In the meantime I started reading the whitepapers listed on the MCM suggested reading list. And a funny thing happened.

I started learning again.

And it felt good.

Early Preparations

That reading list was full of things I never touched. It was full of things that were incredibly applicable to my current job. I couldn’t believe that my company wouldn’t want me to be learning this stuff in greater depth. But it didn’t matter, I was learning it anyway. And what goes into my brain is mine. In other words,  I could take it with me. So I kept reading. And kept waiting. And kept learning.

When the changes to the MCM program were announced at the PASS 2010 Summit I was first in line to watch the videos. Most of the reading materials I had already covered, the only thing left was the videos. As an MVP I was offered the opportunity to take part in a beta exam for the written MCM test. I jumped at the chance and scheduled my exam for as late as I possibly could (December 17th). I then mapped out a schedule for studying. I also mapped out a strategy, but more on that in a minute.

One thing to note here is that your life will not stop simply because you have schedule an exam. Your kids have no idea about your exam. They will get sick if they are going to get sick. They will want your attention when they want your attention. Your parents may need you at odd times. There will be family dinners you need to attend. There will be chores to do, errands to run, and your life is simply not going to be focused on the study material. It just won’t.

And that’s why I really wanted to go to Seattle: so I could be very focused on the material. I know what works well for me, and I know that if I had been in that 3 week program I would have been successful as opposed to trying to do the preparation a little bit at a time. At times it was very difficult to balance. Finally at one point I realized that I already had certifications that were much more important than an MCM: father, husband, and son.

The MCM, should I ever earn it, is simply not as valuable as those others. You should know and understand that as well before you head down your own MCM preparation path.

Knowing I had limited time I needed a strategy to make that time as efficient as possible. I was going to focus on the videos first and foremost. I watched the 33 videos that were originally posted, then watched them a second time and took notes on anything that I didn’t remember the first time, anything that I felt was worth writing down, and anything that needed me to do further research. On Wednesday (two days before my exam), another 23 videos were released. I didn’t have time to watch them twice so I just took notes while I watched them the first time. But I still haven’t told you my strategy.

The whole program is designed to find a way to recognize a certain subset of database professionals as “masters”. We could debate all day and night about what that means. Well, I can’t, because I’m not considered one of them. But when I do join the MCM group then I will be happy to join such a debate. Until then I need to meet whatever criteria has been set for MCM membership. You will hear things like “want to measure the skills that a production DBA with seven year’s experience would have” which I think is complete bullshit. I could be a production DBA for 17 years and never touch a cluster or configure replication. That doesn’t mean that I don’t understand how clustering or replication  work, or be able to RTFM and configure something in a short amount of time. To me the true work of a master is being able to get up to speed as quickly as possible. It isn’t about having the answer as much as it is being able to find the answer and being aware of certain pitfalls along the way.

And there you have my strategy. Did you miss it? Let me make it easier to understand…

My Strategy

Given my prior experience earning a master’s degree I was preparing with the idea that I could be asked any question. However, I also came to an understanding that they don’t want us to have all the answers. Anyone can remember the answers. What they want are people who can apply the answers. The MCM is looking for people that know how and why certain answers could be correct. I don’t remember every math equation (and was never expected to remember them all), but I was expected to take what I did know and apply it to solve a problem.

So when I took my notes I simply would ask myself that question:

“When would this fact be applicable?”

For example, from the videos you will hear something similar to the following: “…data compression is best suited to access patterns where data is read into memory and used once…”

See? That’s an application of data compression. Anyone can remember that a compressed data page has ‘compression information’ listed in the page header, but how does that help you apply the feature for a customer that needs help? It doesn’t. When I heard the statement in the video I wrote it down on paper because it fit my strategy. I focused on the statements where it helped me understand why and when.

Did it pay off? I won’t officially know for 30 days but I believe it did regardless. Out of 64 questions, less than 10 of them were from left field. In other words, I was comfortable with almost all of the questions. Were the questions well written? No, not really. They were missing information for little things like specific disk configurations and editions of SQL. I expect those things will get cleaned up in the RTM version of the exam, but for now I don’t mind having to endure them. I took the beta exam because I wanted to challenge myself and also because I want to help make the exam better for those that will follow.

I said above that it paid off, but you should understand that I don’t believe I actually passed. To me I consider it a success simply because I was comfortable with all of the material. I could debate lots of the questions and answers and if I didn’t mark the correct answer I’m fine with that. I never claimed to be a walking BOL, but the MCM isn’t looking for that anyway. They want people that can apply solutions using the features they have provided. And sitting there asking “why would I do that” is not always as important as “how can I do that given the information at hand”.

That’s what masters do. They make something out of nothing. They help guide you along a path and remind you not to stub your toe along the way. They aren’t always right, but they are almost always aware.

And after that exam I believe I am aware as well.

And it feels good.

We Can Do This Together

And I want you to feel good too. The day before my exam I just so happened to be on Twitter and was struck by an idea as to how the SQL Community could help each other prepare for the MCM exam. Just use the #mcmprep hashtag and we could have our own impromptu study groups. There are many SQL tweeps available throughout the day that would be willing to help each other prepare for the exam. This way we won’t flood the #sqlhelp hashtag with exam preparation concepts, we can have very own discussion.