u/Owarida_zo

So I made this post earlier, dreading the 24/7 nature of the role.

However, after going through the comments I had a change of mind and went through with the interview.

It went well, and I got the network engineering job, expected to start by end of the month. Pay isn't the greatest, but there is an out-of-hours bonus + a 5% increase every 6 months if conditions are met.

The rota doesn't look too bad. It's once every 4 weeks and I'm not expected to start immediately as there's training for new starters.

This is exactly what I need as a young person; having that experience really helps. Just wanted to give my thanks to everyone, and I'm super excited to get started!

My mum and I had a clash of ideas earlier. Nothing severe at all, don't worry.

I (22M) was explaining my future goals to her, and mentioned that my next ambition for the year was to find a place to live, buy a car and live life alone for a while.

She strongly disagreed. In her opinion, there was no need for me to do all that and instead proposed a different solution; save up and get married while I'm still living rent-free.

In response, I stated that I believe it's important for men to shoulder rent, bills and household duties alone - as it is important character-building for being a good & responsible husband. When he eventually marries, the wife will receive the full package.

She asked if I was having a baby, to which I said a strong no 😭. She then continued and said I was being financially inept and that I'd just be putting myself under unnecessary financial stress. "You're single so why do you need to do all of this right now?"

To her, it's a better option to save up money for furniture and a honeymoon (we both hate weddings so we discarded that haha), and then find a home to move into together.

Out of respect, I didn't say anything else as I wished to not annoy her.

I can see her point, but I still can't help but feel that men need their own environment for a year or two. Am I being thick-headed?

22M. I'll try to keep this short.

I've been doing 1st/2nd line IT support for roughly 3-4 years now, and have decided to transition into networking. To accomplish this, I picked up my CCNA last week and am now searching for any networking role.

I was offered an interview for a network support engineer position (nice!). The pay isn't that great; we're looking at £35k a year but as a young guy, experience matters more than the money right now.

The job itself involves a solid amount of network fundamentals which is awesome (router/switch configuration, access points, LAN & WANs as well as advanced Wi-Fi support).

Only issue is.....there's a 24/7 on-call rota I'm expected to participate in. I'm not sure what that looks like, but I assume you'll work your normal day shifts and then have an emergency device next to you during off-hours....?

Either way, I'm a person that really values his sleep + I got a really nice schedule outside of work. But at the same time, this can be a real opportunity for me to ascend in my premature career days and I feel like some sacrifices have to be made on the way.

Nevertheless, I'm not entirely sure if I should proceed with this interview. Any advice?

Hey everyone. I started my CCNA journey around late May, and this afternoon I passed my exam, concluding 2½ months of intensive study. During this time, I lurked around this sub a lot for extra info and even posted once, looking for advice.

Now that I've passed, I figured I'd flip the script and share my experience with people who are also looking to become CCNA-certified (man it feels good to be on this side for once 😅).

1) Resources

JITL + Boson is all you need. That's it, nothing else. JITL covers the raw material, and Boson exposes you on topics you never believed you were weak on.

The flashcards are also very important, but as I moved deeper into the course, I found it a bit challenging to finish every deck and had like 1000+ review cards backlogged 🤣. For me, it a lot simpler to test my memory and knowledge via interactive Gemini-generated practice questions on each topic.

2) Labs

You MUST do these! If you ain't, then you're genuinely setting yourself up for FAILURE (no sugarcoating it, you WILL fail if you don't lab 😭). Thanks to regular practice, my muscle memory allowed me to steam through the labs today as well as other questions I encountered.

Jeremy has plenty of these in his videos, but it's important to also create your own. There are other resources like NetSim that allows you to lab further, but I relied on a cool Gemini-prompt (which I will share in the comments) to generate labs for me after each JITL vid.

I cannot stress this enough, if you want to gain this certificate then consistent labbing is MANDATORY. Lab, lab, lab!!!

3) Discipline > Motivation

Your studies DESERVE consistent attention, not when you "feel like it". Try to fit in some quiet time to study each day, be it an hour or two. Even if you don't have time for that, allow yourself 20-30 minutes to review what you learnt yesterday. You'll find that the more you move, the harder it becomes to stop moving.

4) Boson

I briefly mentioned Boson earlier, but I felt like I undermined its importance a little bit. I understand you may be hesitant to fork out extra money on top of the already-costly exam fee.....

...thing is, you NEED the best chances you can get to pass this exam and Boson provides that nicely! I'd argue its actually HARDER than the real exam itself. Compared to the Boson labs, the actual exam labs had me doing double-takes on how PISS-EASY it was 🤣. You'll need Boson to maximise your chances of passing.

If there is any other advice you'd like to offer, feel free to ask and I'll try to get back! As for me, I'm just gonna enjoy a weekend without hearing "Welcome to Jeremy's IT Lab" 🫡

So my exam is roughly 12 hours from now. I've been scoring roughly 71-78% on all Boson labs for the past week. Spent the past few hours following Jeremy's megalab (skipped the parts I'm strong on to focus on weak areas like IPv6 and Wireless).

Idk, I've been relaxed all week but now the nerves are beginning to get to me....can't stop thinking of failing for some reason. My brain keeps telling me that I still have a lot of content I need to review, but I'm pretty much overloaded with info after 3 months of intensive study.

What's the best thing to do pre-exam? How did you best prepare for the exam? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

22 yr old dude here.

I still can't wrap my head around how married folk with kids manage to take care of their spouses + offspring and old parents simultaneously. I wasn't able to see this for myself growing up, as my grandparents were mostly abroad.

The arrangement I'm imagining in my head right now is either having the parents live with the family, or visits back and forth; even then, it's a little too much work.

My parents have been pushing me to get married, but I can't help but think I'll be abandoning them by doing so. Luckily I come from a large family; so it's not like they'll be missing out on grandkids. I am fine with "taking one for the team".

Now my parents aren't old by any means (both early 50s and still very much capable).....but a part of me has considered just remaining single and dedicating my life to being their full-time carer until death does us apart.

I get to spend the next decade or two upgrading myself and ascending in my career whilst being the cool uncle to my nieces/nephews, lots of free time, it's easier on my wallet and my parents won't feel abandoned having their loving child's full attention....only issues are I'll be battling urges forever + risk of dying old and alone.

Don't mean to sound edgy but I've been pretty much a loner all my life, so this arrangement isn't too outlandish on my end 😅. But my parents would NEVER in a billion years accept this, so it's all just internal conflict.

I dislike weddings. I'd go so far as to say I hate them.

I was at one not too long ago and, whilst I was happy for that person, I couldn't help but cringe at the food waste I saw during the clean-up. Whole dishes of good food was just tossed aside into black bags without anyone batting an eyelid. Imagine being responsible for all that waste.

In addition to that, it's very extravagant, costly and 90% of the people that show up will forget about you the next day. What's the point of spending thousands to entertain people like that?

Plus, personally I don't like being the centre of attention and a wedding will only kill my confidence and self-esteem. I simply don't see the point in one, despite its popularity in culture.

Though, I can really feel myself going against the grain here; every sister I've spoken to wanted one. Maybe my fellow brothers would understand me, but apparently for women it's a day they dream of, and it got me thinking.

Am I being too extreme?

Pretty much the title. The only thing I have left to study are REST APIs. I haven't booked the exam yet as I still need to review a few things, but with this result should I book one now and start preparing?

For the past 2 months, I've been going at a real steady pace through Jeremy's list. I've stumbled on a few topics like OSPF/QoS and IPv6, but I was able to recover after some intensive practice labs and revision.

But this wireless....I kid you not, for the past week I have not been able to move on. The finish line is right there and I find myself rewatching each vid and still struggling to grasp it all. It's just so much theory yet very little practice available 😭

I feel like, in trying to catch up on wireless, I'm slowly losing what i've learnt earlier which sucks big time. Anyone else relate?

I'm currently on Day 51 of JITL's series (103/126). After each lesson, I occasionally use the flashcards but I dedicate more time asking Gemini to test my knowledge with practice questions and mainly labs (I probably do at least 10 random labs after each video in addition to jeremy's one).

I don't intend on jumping into Boson's practice exams right away as I still have some material left, but I reckon using study mode and making my own quizzes might be neat.

If it helps, I intend to take the exam within the next 4 weeks. (2 weeks of finishing the material, then 2 weeks of crazed revision + labs before exam day).

Would it be a good time to buy Boson now or should I wait until after I finish the playlist?

Let me describe my situation before I begin.

I'm a 22 year old dude that shares a flat with my dad (don't have my own place).

I usually work in tech, but recently took time off to upskill and gain certifications for a better paying job (I'm about 70% done, so still unemployed with ample savings).

Plus, I got a license but no car. However, I'm quietly confident in myself and I believe I can achieve at least 2 of these things by the end of the year InshaAllah.

Despite all of the qualities I lack to be a good husband, my dad thinks it's a brilliant idea to get me married rn 😮‍💨

I've tried to explain that marriage is expensive and no sane woman would want me as I am now (heck even I wouldn't want myself rn 🙏) but that hasn't stopped him from introducing suitors occassionally.

My dad has a very old fashioned view on marriage and believes that all women need is a little bit of convincing to win them over. He doesn't understand that marriage now is different than 30+ years ago, and nowadays most women want an arm & a leg to even look at your direction.

I dunno man....I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. Has anyone else been in a similar position?

Question mainly for the brothers, but sisters are also welcome to chime in.

I (22M) am asking this because I've been getting pressured recently to find myself a wife. My parents have been bringing it up a lot the past few months. Uncles at the masjid have been asking me if I'm in wedlock (even though I tell them I'm only 22 😅).

Doesn't help my case that 2 guys my age (that my parents personally know) are having their weddings this month. I think I've heard the word "marriage" more times in the last 5-6 months than I have in my whole life prior to that.

Now I'm a simple man that loves his peace of mind. And a small part of me feels like caving in so this marriage talk can finally be over. But in my current state, I feel like entering a marriage is unfair on the woman's end.

So my question is, what's the bare minimum required to even consider marriage?

So I just finished Day 11 of JITL, where he covered routing fundamentals. It was a lot of content but I think I've absorbed it well, even further so after I did the labs.

As much as I love JITL, I wish we had more examples to work with in the lab videos. I know it's free content and I probably sound like an entitled guy asking for more, but I really wanna make this info stick by practicing more.

So I came across the IPv4 header topic whilst studying, and it's probably been my greatest obstacle so far.

There's several fields that we had to be aware of; I can understand what each part does, but I *can't*, for the life of me, remember how many bits are in each field.

For example, I can understand and explain in full detail what the identification field or the flags field represent with no hassle, but if you ask me the length of each one, my mind blanks 😭

I'm not sure if this can legally be answered but is this something they expect you to remember in the exam??

Is not having a degree a dealbreaker to you? I came across an ISO thread and it looks like 99% of the requirements in a husband involve being educated and having at least a bachelor's degree.

I mean, yeah it makes sense. But as a 22 yr old uni dropout, I can't help but feel worried that this is the modern standard irl.

I work in a good industry with high paying potential (my occupation lies in technology; I have plans to move into networking and then cybersecurity/firewalls once I gain more certs). It's not quite the degree that most women are looking for, but I fear it may not be enough.

I'm more than happy to just climb up the career ladder alone until I find a secure enough job, but my parents basically expect me to be in wedlock next year and I kinda agree with em.

I just want to know how much of a dealbreaker a degree-less potential is to you.