A dose of anti-depression

Having been feeling nothing exciting to do on the techie bits- well, in fact not many things to do at work at all for a while, I doubt I got the Clinic Depression after taking a 10 minutes quiz online*.

Clinic Depression is not a work-avoidance excuse or can be taken lightly. As the reference material says, you need to take counselling and some pills for a really long time. It is a mood in that, you loss interests on everything and don’t want to get in with those even most fascinating things before. You tell yourself to ‘I need to put everything together’, but you just can’t’.

Instead of loss in this hollow, I booked a Microsoft ASP.NET exam (70-315) bluntly. It costs about 100 pounds for about two hours. I decided to pay it myself instead of ask my boss to sign the bill- just to full load the pressure on myself.

Thought I have done some ASP.NET for about a year so far, I never have a proper or well scheduled learning period before. Got three weeks to prepare for it at that time. At some points I start to think ‘should I re-schedule the exam?’ I didn’t.

Instead, I told everyone in the team about it three days before the exam, so the pressure is at the explosive point. (Actually, it is quite silly to do that, not even leave a fail-back place.)

I took the exam this morning.

And I passed! With a score 906 out of 1000. The pass mark is 700.

It is really good news in any sense. I did learn a lot of new ASP.NET stuff, and lights shed on to those corners in normal developer’s lives will probably missed, such like deployment or security configuration. And I got out from the depression mood completely and feeling fully charged and in control now.

I wouldn’t say it is the end/top of the ASP.NET skills I will have. It wouldn’t stop there. I take it as a bench mark which means I can progress further.

And overall, I just proofed MCSD exams are most effective anti-depression drugs money can buy.

*As Nick pointed out, the online quiz is targeting female audience. I reckon it should work for both.