You may or may not know that I have been studying for my Certified Ethical Hacker certification. I previously studied for and passed the Comptia Security + certification, despite some serious doubts on my part. Well, now I have some serious SERIOUS doubts about my ability to get the CEH certification. I am passing the practice tests, because I studied the answers to the questions I got wrong until I could get them right, but that doesn’t mean I have a true handle on the information. I’ve studied just about as much as I can, though, and I just have to hope that the questions on the actual exam are similar enough to the practice exams that I’ll be able to muddle through and get a 70%. It’s a four hour test – WHAT THE HELL?! I can’t imagine what could take four hours. The practice test takes about an hour. It is 125 questions. The fact that the REAL exam takes four hours makes me worried that I am wildly unready for it. What the hell do you have to do? Hack a system? Fuckkkkkkkkk. It is scheduled for Thursday, June 29th. Right now I am feeling too overwhelmed to study but I have to overcome that. Sometimes I have to literally force myself to study. When I am overwhelmed I just want to sit around and obsess. That doesn’t really get me anything good.
Ok, off to take some more practice tests! The next one is from the study guide I read, it’ll be new questions so it’ll test my knowledge instead of my ability to remember the answers to questions. Wish me luck!
Just to give some background on me, I have Bipolar Disorder, some say Bipolar II and some say Bipolar I. I tend to be more depressed than manic, in fact the manic episodes are few and far between. The depressed episodes are entirely too frequent. I left my last full-time job about 3 1/2 years ago due to depression. I actually went on FMLA to have ECT, and I never went back. I was in a suicidal depression and I was hospitalized twice. I had over forty ECT treatments. I still don’t know if they helped. I tend to think that the Ketamine they used to sedate me helped more than the ECT. The reason I say this is because I had ECT in Florida too, and they didn’t use Ketamine for sedation, and I felt like shit after those treatments. I was on Clozaril for about a year and a half and it turned me into a zombie. I think what finally brought me out of being a depressed zombie was switching from Clozaril to Abilify. I don’t remember why we did this, but I am totally grateful. I have been able to function better than I have in a long time, moved back into my own apartment, started working part-time a little more than a year ago, and then got the opportunity to start classes for these IT Security certifications in January. The fact that I can study and learn is something that I would not have even dreamed of a year ago. So that brings us up to date. I am taking my last certification test next week and I have started looking for an IT Security job. That is my next hurdle. Full-time jobs are kind of like Kryptonite to me and my mental health. If I can find a part-time job, I will know there is a God 🙂