BSc (Hons), PhD, PMP

I got the monkey off my back today!

In '98 I had a boss who said the project management professional (PMP) certification was it! We had to get "it" to remain in the profession. The other PMs and myself were ho-hum about the whole deal and most of us ignored him. I left the company shortly after and continued the life of a PM, sans certification.

After the dot-bomb and jobs became scarce the requirement for PMP certification started to appear in job requirements. Holy crap that Sicilian-Scot boss (with a temper like Satan, I might add) was right, we do need PMP! So in December 2003 I met up with some PMs while I was contracting and we formed a PMP study group. That lasted about a month, one person took a course and got the certification, two people dropped out leaving myself and Steph.

Steph and I worked our way through the PMBOK and various study guides…we took months off and one of us would pull the other one back in. This went on until March of this year and we stopped again. We had gone through everything, we knew it, we just needed the guts to go get it! In June I said I was going for it and didn't hear back from Steph. I deliberately waited until a week before I was to sit the test and then studied up until the exam.

I hadn't sat an exam in almost 20 years, holy moly I was scared. I was annoyed that people said, that with the education and degrees I had, PMP would be a breeze. I resented their faith in me. I was scared I'd fail. I was scared they were wrong. I had no confidence.

Today I almost took the whole 4 hours, but I got it. Tired and weepy I walked out of the testing building with another 3 letters to add to the end of my name.