Family, PhilNITS, Work, Perl

It’s way past 1AM and I’m still awake.

Not that I’m into something new to tinker with, but I’m doing a bit of planning. I can’t sleep — I keep on thinking about a lot of things.

In a little more than a month’s time I’ll be taking the Philippine National IT Standards (PhilNITS) Examination. It’s quite a bit late of a decision for me, I informed my manager just last week. Aside from taking the Japanese Language Proficiency Test last December of 1999, this will be the second time that I’ll ever be taking a standards examination. Admittedly I’m quite nervous — I’ve never taken a board exam (none was required for my degree) and I consider this to be somewhat like one. Actually I should have taken this a few years ago, I just don’t know why I kept on passing up whenever I’m asked if I would be taking it.

Wanting to prove something to myself? I don’t know. I just feel like challenging myself to get a high grade from the exam (Cocky? No, I’m aiming a bit high so that even if I miss my target, there would still be a higher percentage of me being able to pass the exam).

I’ve gathered review materials from the PhilNITS website. I tried answering the first 30 items from last years’ examination, and I was able to make 10 sure answers, the rest being ‘intelligent’ guesses. That tool me less than ten minutes. Maybe I still have a long way to go — a review to recall those past lessons might help a bit.

So right now I’m making a plan to study all covered topics in 3 weeks, and the fourth and fifth week would be spent taking the exams posted in the PhilNITS website and doing a final review. Of course I still have my day job and my travails with Perl, and and I have my family to take care of. I hope my family would understand if I’d switch to Hermit mode in front of my books and computer for 1-2 hours everyday.

Quit laughing. I’m serious about this.