First of all, lots of thanks to all contributors to this forum! It has been so helpful to study all the lessons learned and study resources here. And great thanks to my in-laws, my husband and my 4 year old. They have been super supportive when I was preparing for the test.

I just cleared PMP on first attempt this afternoon. It was very intensive 4 hours. I'm so proud of myself getting it passed!

I decided to do PMP since last May. But I wasn't really dedicated until last month when I found out my PMI membership was getting expired on May 4. So I scheduled the test right away for May 2. By then I had less than one month left.

I had roughly gone through PMBOK once, and half Rita's. I started with finishing the other half of Rita's. I took my own notes when I did the first half of Rita's. But I didn't do it for the 2nd half, as it's more time-consuming. Taking notes will definitely helps to remember things, if you have time. I took all quizes I could find after every chapters.

I was planning to do 5 full mock up tests in the last week before the test. Unfortunitely, my son was sick in that week. He wanted to stay in my arms most of the time. So I only got time to do two mockup (with a sick kid in my left arm with no time to review), both scored below 70%. The results were a bit depressing. But I told myself I should be doing better in the real test. I had to change my study plan on the last day. I went through Rajesh's notes, a free online ITTO study tool and the last chaper of Rita's (again), instead of taking another mockup. After getting all these done, I was confident that I had almost studied everything (maybe a few still missing. but i didn't think it would harm the test.)

I started the test 40 minutes earlier than scheduled. I was sick myself for a few days. The test center didn't allow bringing water or tissue paper into the test room. After negotiation, I could take two pieces of tissue paper inside. I was coughing very badly during the first 2.5 hours. I had to come out of the room every 10-15 minutes, to get new tissue paper, drinking water, or coughing. Luckily, coughing got better in the last 1.5 hours. I was planning to do 70 questions every hour in the first hours and take 5 minute break, and leave sometime for review. But because of the bad coughing, I had to the change the plan. I didn't take any break unless necessary. During the test, I spent more time on each question to make sure I got the right answer, instead of leaving it open and coming back later, because I knew I might not have time to review at all. When I finished 200 questions, only 18 minutes left. I reviewed about 25 questions, and time's up.

While waiting for the result and doing the survey, I could feel my hands were shaking. ... Luckily, I got passed!

Lessons learned:

1. Instead of focusing on the results of mockups, using the quesions to find out your knowledge gaps, and practicing time management in the real test (meaning got a rough feeling how fast you can finish the test), and make a plan accordingly.

2. You don't really to remember ITTO. But use that to put together what you have learned by reading chapter by chapter. If you have understood the whole process of project management, you remember most of ITTO already.

3. As a project manager in a week matrix for 7 years, I would say one important thing by learning PMBOK and Rita's is to get rid of what I have experience from my real PM lift from brain, and use PMISM for the test.

4. Dump sheet is every important. Practice writing that down twice every day for one week before the test.

5. Unlike what some others have experienced, the 2nd half of the test was more difficult than the 1st half for me, because most situational and calculation questions were in the 2nd half. Some questions, about 60-70, were very confusing. I just remembered what many other people said in their LL, it happened to everyone, telling myself taking it easy.

I got about 20 calculation questions. 40 straight forward ones, 60-70 tricky ones. I would say the difficulty is about the same as the mockup tests I could find online. Again, the most important thing is to use the test results finding out your knowledge gaps. The score doesn't matter. When you going through the notes and the ITTOs, if you can understand what all inputs and outputs and TTS mean, you are ready for the test!

Good luck, everyone! It's a hard process, but rewarding!