Arien vs. The World

I finally took the first part of the MySQL Certification Exam and… it went quite well! I passed with a wide margin, although since I didn’t study much I couldn’t get an outstanding mark.

The exam was not easy, but didn’t feel that hard either. It contained 70 questions, most of them with multiple answers. I had to sign some sort of NDA before the exam, so unfortunately I can’t give details on the contents of the questions. So I will just say: study hard and make sure you understand all the lessons.

Maybe it sounds a bit silly that I give advice such as “study hard”, while I also said a few lines above that I didn’t study much. Well, I’m part of the lucky group of people who just need to read something once or twice to remember it, so I don’t have to study for days to pass an exam. It’s not really photographic memory, just feels easy to remember certain things (not everything). That’s how I passed most of my exams when I was in primary and high school. It didn’t always work with things like Maths, where you have to fully understand, rather than simply memorize, but then I also understand things quickly, so it wasn’t a problem either. It just required a little more effort than usual.

Nowadays, this “ability” of being able to remember things easily has diminished, probably because of underusing it. But this exam proved it still works for me. Which doesn’t mean it will work for you. So I won’t tell you that it’s an easy exam and you can pass it without studying. Please, do study and make sure you understand what the book is telling you before attempting to pass it. If you do that, you don’t have to be scared.

Good luck! 🙂