u/Drangarnir-Says

Been basically lurking here for awhile and this sub has been incredibly helpful, especially all the 'passed' posts to share info and keep me motivated. Here's mine in the hopes it pays it forward.

Prep Materials:

• Destination Cert Book - I found it quite interesting to read and a gives you a good idea of how broad this exam really is. Fire extinguishers, really?
• Cyberkraft Training - My employer will only pay for the exam when its bundled with a course, so I had to find an online training that also included the voucher. I didn't find the online course all that enlightening, but I've never been to a bootcamp for any exam, so I have nothing to compare to.
• Numerous Youtube videos - mostly the usual suspects like 50 hard questions, why you will pass, 100 topics, Mike Chapple. There is also a good AI coverage video from the Dest Cert guys that I think is worth watching. Not rocket science, but good to nod your head along and confirm you are familiar with the things he covers in that video
• Dest Cert App - excellent for all sorts of questions. I made it through about 500 questions. Would have covered more but I prefer to study from a computer screen rather than my phone. Flashcards were a nice change to mix things up.
• PocketPrep - this was huge for me. It reinforced main topics and quickly revealed things that needed better coverage. I found the clarifications helpful and for any where I disagreed or didn't quite get the nuance, I had a long conversation with ChatGPT until I could sort it out.
• Dion Practice Tests - I only made it through 2 as I did these at the end. Scores of 71 and 72, but spent hours combing through what I got wrong and ones that I got right but wasn't completely sure about with ChatGPT. I think those back and forth discussions really helped solidify things for me in many topics, or understand that some things are just more "classic" answers like why you choose SAML over OpenID. These tests were excellent practice for me.
• Dont Panic Book - I really liked this book and the included questions. I made it through about 60 questions and got most of them wrong. I found the explanations very good and helpful
• QuantumExams - I took 1 exam and failed miserably, which really shook my confidence. Did more 10 question quizzes and scored a bit better on those. I think that's the best way to use this tool. The explanations were sometimes less complete than the Dont Panic book, so I generally used DP more.
• CISSP 11th hour Memory Guide - I haven't seen any mention of this book before. I picked it up on a whim and I really liked it because it functioned like a checklist for me. Domain 1, 35 topics in a keyword. Do I recognize them all and explain them to myself in a couple sentences? yes. Anything I didn't recognize when directly into ChatGPT for some discussion.
• ChatGPT - absolutely key for me. I learn by analyzing and reasoning through things. There was also a prompt posted by another person that really helped me out: https://www.reddit.com/r/cissp/comments/1vdi3rq/finished_the_exam_and_went_crying/
• Links - Mostly around answering strategies: https://www.mindmeshacademy.com/blog/articles/cissp-exam-sample-questions https://blog.balancedsec.com/p/strategy-guide-for-answering-difficult

Exam Strategy - I had a very specific exam strategy after reading Tresharley's CAT related whitepapers. If you haven't read this you should go and read in detail so you understand exactly how it works. I know that I have a tendency to read fast. Then, even if I narrow it down to two answers, I sometimes miss some small keyword and pick the wrong answer. Given that, my strategy was to pace for 40 questions per hour. This meant I planned for accuracy, not 150 questions, and expected that the ROOT rule would work in my favor if needed (of course ensuring that I completed a minimum of 100 questions).

Exam day feels - I am a native english speaker and I literally had zero clue what some of the questions really wanted. There were also words I did not recognize and a few with grammatical errors. I didn't feel like the first 20 questions were easy at all, and I was rereading questions 3 times trying to sort them out. My pacing worked fairly well, but I was pretty convinced I would fail the exam given how many wtf moments I had. When the exam stopped at 100 I knew I failed. So bad that I told the proctor to give me the sheet folded so I wouldn't know right then (and have to face the shame in front of these nice people). In the hallway I was very confused when I couldn't find a table at the bottom of the letter... then started reading from the top and saw congratulations :-)

Honestly, I don't think any of the many practice questions I did really represented my experience. Training to look for key words in questions and eliminate answers is the best advice I can give, which I think is best done by completing a lot of practice questions and exams. Even if the questions are like what I saw, they'll at least be in the neighborhood.

Special note to my fellow ADHDers - you CAN do this. Make your studying novel and fun so that you stick with it and absorb all the info. Leverage your pattern recognitions strengths to your advantage and make sure you eat a lot of protein before to feed your brain for a 3 hour fight. You can do this!