#17: Recovery After Exam
Last week, I took the Microsoft AZ-500 exam and passed to become a Microsoft Certified Azure Security Engineer. Taking an exam for most people is a very stressful experience. It is an even greater struggle for Neurodivergent people like me who have Autism and ADHD.
Spoon Theory
To prepare for the exam, I studied for months. The problem was, I would get exhausted from studying, job hunting, and dealing with anxiety and depression from getting laid off from my job. A common coping strategy for people with ADHD is using the Spoon Theory to carefully manage energy on a set of tasks each day. It is often easier for me to imagine managing one’s personal battery. Spoon theory helped.
Methods
However, the inconvenient truth is that the methods for studying for IT and Cybersecurity certification exams such as reading books, watching videos, or attending a certification boot camp with presentations were designed for people who do not have disabilities. The methods assume that everyone learns the same way, but everyone is different. So, using methods not optimized for me leads me to a longer road for exam preparation.
Roller Coaster
On the day of the exam, I did everything to prepare. This included: Getting a good night’s sleep, noting the location of the exam, and having the required form of identification for checking-in. So, I felt confident taking the exam. What I was not prepared for was technical difficulties. The last few questions of the exam required me to complete ten tasks in a cloud simulation. Problem is I could not login to the tenant with the information provided. After about 15 minutes of arguing with the exam center’s staff, my anxiety spiked because I believed that not completing the simulation questions would result in an automatic exam failure. Then by some miracle, I was able to login but I ran out of time and did not finish all the questions. I felt with complete certainty that I failed the exam, but I received an email shortly after that I actually passed. The anxiety fueled roller coaster ride was finally over.
Need to Recover
After passing the exam, a person is normally happy and jubilant. I was exhausted mentally and physically. This is the part that people do not talk about when taking exams. Similar to surgery or a traumatic event, a person needs to transition out of exam mode. Having ADHD complicates this further for me because part of me wanted to avoid stopping and just start studying for the next certification exam despite the exhaustion. Why stop the train? I had to force myself to stop and chill. I needed a hard reset or a power cycle so to speak. In the end, we all need to relax sometime.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.
