Today I Failed a Certification Exam, and I’m Totally Okay With It.

You heard that right. Today, I sat for my Platform Developer 1 exam, failed spectacularly, and am totally cool with it! To be honest, I didn’t sit down in the testing center expecting to pass it. It would have been awesome, yeah, but I have a lot more work to do first. For those of you who follow along, you’ll know that I just became a #RadGrad – a graduate of the Rad Women Code program, and am currently on my #JourneytoCTA. So Platform Developer 1 is next on my long list of certifications I need to become a certified Salesforce architect.

I scheduled this test a few months ago after attending TrailheaDX. (As part of the conference, you get two free certification vouchers!!) Also if you follow along on my journey you know that I don’t have a lot of time for anything besides work and kids, so I have not done any real studying for this exam at all – something I totally regret and will try to change, but also something that’s almost out of my control. (Kinda sounds like an excuse, doesn’t it?) But I thought, what the hell – maybe I’ll surprise myself! After all, I’ve passed all my other 4 certifications the first time I tried! So this morning, I woke up early, trusted the teenager to watch the toddler, and drove myself to the testing center. Its always the same routine: Show two forms of ID, read the same set of testing center rules you read every time, dump all of your belongings in a bin, wonder for the 3rd time if maybe you should have gone to the bathroom first, and then sit down in front of a computer screen that is asking you if you’re ready. Am I really going to do this? Hell yeah I am! Click start exam.

This was my first time taking a Developer exam of any kind, and it was actually pretty neat. Instead of process scenarios and what-ifs, I was asked to analyze code blocks. Sometimes I had to try and figure out what the result of the block would be if it had actually run and sometimes I was asked to figure out if it would even run at all. I actually surprised myself at how much I had really learned during my 10 week Rad Women course. I actually understood what most of the code blocks were doing, so there was that. There was also a lot that I realized I haven’t learned yet. We covered test classes and I have even written some, but I was asked questions about test classes that I had never seen before. And controllers for visualforce pages. They had me stumped for some reason. But overall, I did really well I think. And actually, had I got just a few more questions right, I would have passed!

Time to Focus

With this exam under my belt, I actually feel MORE CONFIDENT that I can get this certification and then the next one and the next one and the next one… but my lesson here is a good one. If you want something you have to work for it. If you want something you have to make time for it. And I want this so badly. So its time to stay up a little bit later each night. Finish this Platform Developer 1 trailmix, and get the Apex Specialist Super Badge!

I know I’m up for this challenge and will be posting so soon about how I’m a certified Platform Developer! 🙂