Yes, you read that right. 2 days before I was to write my exam my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Needless to say this was one risk that I did not have a fallback plan for. With 2 days of very little sleep and almost no studying, I decided to write the exam anyway. Here is my story and lessons learned. Hopefully it will provide some useful insight, some motivation, and if nothing else, will provide an entertaing story while you are procratinating.

First and foremost, THANK YOU to anyone who has ever contributed to this forum. The tips and resources found here were crucial in my preparations. Also the storys in the lessons learned gave me motivation when I would start to loose steam.

Study materials and strategy

Rita Mulcahy - PMP® Exam Prep 7th Edition x3
PMBOK®Guide  4 Edition x3
Abhishek's Version - Rajesh Nair PMP Notes

I was approved to take the PMP in December. I started with a quick pass thru PMBOK while creating notecards for the ITTOs. Yes, I attempted to memorize the ITTOs knowing the differing opions. To me, it is all in what works for the individual. I memorized everything but the procurements even before I knew what the terms really meant. For each following pass I made through Rita and the PMBOK, the ITTOs made more sense and started to form a puzzle of interweaving inputs and outputs.

Take a look at Abhishek or Rajesh's notes and MAKE YOUR OWN. Making my own note sheet really helped.

For me, it was neccessary for me to keep changing my study style to keep me from getting bored. I started with the ITTO memorization. Then I started making my own note sheet as I went through the books, then I started practice exams.

I started doing mock exams in March. I did a lot of them. I averaged between 65% and 70% all the way up to the exam date! This was starting to worry me because I would see people say, "If you get over 80% your ready", or "If you get in the 70s consistently, your ready". I was neither of those. I was mid 60s throughout. BUT, it is not about the percentages. It is going back through and researching what you got wrong and why. That is most important.

Rita Fasttrack - The most helpful to me
PMStudy
Oliver Lehman
Headfirst
PMZILLA tough
Rita Chapter exams
Simplilearn
Edwel
PMPforSure
MyPMPeamPrep
Scordo - Loved these I did a lot of them

Cheat Sheet

This is how I memorized my formulas. Make a cheat sheet to brain dump at the exam. Write it every day you study. By the time your exam comes, you will not even need to write it down. I did though; it makes you feel good to have that reference. I want to share how I memorized my formulas, because it really helped me, but everybody has different technique so pick what works for you.

I wrote the formulas vertically; saw this on a site somewhere and it helped.

Maybe this is more work than just learning the formulas, I dont know. But after writing this out so many times, I now have them memorized.

Test Day

Choosing my test day was difficult. I wanted to take the exam before my wife had our baby, but also give myself the maximum amount of time to study. So I pick the weekend before her due date. I knew it was risky but I THOUGHT the probability of it being close enough to affect my exam date was low. I was wrong.

My exam was scheduled for Saturday April 13^th. Thursday however, our baby feels it is time to enter the world. At this time PMP was the last thing on my mind. Baby was born just before midnight that Thursday. I didn’t crack a book once that day. Friday I did a 50 question mock exam and that was all I could get in. But even doing that, my head just wasn’t focused on PMP. I ended up getting just over 4 hours of sleep the night before my exam. I got to my exam center 45 minutes early. I studied the notes that I made for a half hour and went and checked in.

I am so glad there were 20 – 30 mathematical questions on there, maybe even more than that. Math is my strong suit so that helped.  I found the rest we mostly situational. I don’t have much insight to what kind of questions were on the exam. The exam was not as hard as I imagined. I think some of those mock tests are harder than the real exam. I held my breath and hit submit and boom… CONGRATULATIONS.

Summary

I have a short attention span. For me switching my studying styles helped a lot. Check into this forum often. It is a great resource and great motivation. I averaged 65% on my mock tests all the way up to exam day so DO NOT freak out about your mock scores. Just keep turning those wheels. I don’t recommend having a baby 2 days before but I do believe she brought me the good luck to pass that exam.

Thanks again to all who have ever posted here.