I’ve been very much absent from the blog for some time, but in my defence I do have a pretty valid reason for my time away from here. It’s called Project Management Institute, PMI for short. I took a 5 day Project Management Professional prep course in November, filled out an extensive PMI application some time after that, and after being accepted to take the exam it was time to set an exam date and study. I haven’t studied so hard since college, so it took some time to adjust.

Of course studying for this project management certification was much different from any college exam I ever took. For one, I’ve been working on, with, or under projects for the past 11 years, so a lot of what I was learning had an immediate “Ahh, that’s how it was supposed to be done” to it. I was able to translate most every aspect of the exam into a situation I have or have had on a project myself. I say most, cause there was a lot of math in the Cost section that I’ve never really used before. Keep things under budget, got it. Cost performance index? Not so much. Meet deadlines and be on schedule, got it. Schedule performance index? What’s that?

So yeah, I’ve been at it for the past few months, evening after evening, practice exam, sample questions, and more book reading night after night. BUT…. I passed, and can now freely sit down to my laptop and not have to review a stakeholder management plan, oh wait, I gotta do that for work now! 🙂