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Joining Somnath's PMP rank - March 17th 2007

So what if we don't share a surname yet(blame that on plain laziness and mortal fear of the endless paperwork to be done to change my last name on Indian official documents-but that's a different story) - we now share the same suffix - Priya Halady,PMP recently joined Somnath Purkayastha,PMP :)

For those trying to guess what PMP stands for - it is 'Project Management Professional' credential granted by the Project Management Institute(PMI) - refer to www.pmi.org for details.

The Beginning - My PMP story began in late Dec 2006 - I started thinking about doing the certification. Made the intent official when I announced it officially as part of the career development plan at work. Set the target for completion as end of March 2007. Good thing about this was that I got buffer time since my application got selected for audit and that led to some delay. Preparation was ok - honestly feel that I would never be able to confidently say that I was fully prepared for the exam :) It was just too vast and at times a bit dull. Once I got the application out of the way, I scheduled to appear for the exam on Mar 17th at 4pm.

Day of the exam - I am a night owl - prefer to study late into the night and cannot wake up early to study. So this arrangement worked out very well. Completed the last bit by studying until 4am on Mar 17th and then didnt touch the study material after that. We headed out to the exam center a little early...reached there 1.5 hours before the exam. But they said that I could appear for the test immediately if I desired. Rather than waiting with the other GMAT/GRE candidates appearing for their tests at the Prometric center, decided to get it done with immediately.

During the exam - 4 hours is a long time but believe me, didnt know how time passed. I was a bit nervous at the start but settled in pretty well after 5 minutes or so. Finished attempting all the questions with 45 mins to spare and went back to all the questions that I had marked for 'Review'. Found that in most cases, I decided to stick with my initial instinct and didnt make too many changes. 5 mins to go and I decided to submit and find out my fate. For about 2 mins all I got was a blank gray screen - what do I do next? Walk out and talk to the center folks and ask them....what happened to my 4 hours nerve-wracking hard work? Hold on...got a dialog box that said 'evaluating' and then 'Congratulations!!' Phew!! 2 months of Project Management jargon bore successful results :)

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