So yesterday I signed up for the MS JavaScript cert exam. Today was that exam.
I guess its technically not possible to fail "hard". You either pass or you don't. And I didn't. I'm not sure how I should feel about it though.
The exam gives you 45min to answer 39 questions. However, each of those 39 questions has multiple questions within the question. Some of them were 2-part questions but a lot of them were 4- and 5-part questions. That gives you about 30sec to answer any given question so that you don't run out of time. Unfortunately some of those questions were tricky and I ended up losing a lot of time on them. I finished the exam without answering a large chunk of the final questions.
Also, the exam covers vanilla Javascript but our cohort blew through vanilla JS way back in week 3 or 4 and we moved on to React and JSX. The exam focuses on a lot of array methods, do/while, for loops and other Javascript mainstays that we just didn't go over in class. I was caught off-guard seeing good-old "array.pop" again (like a Game of Thrones character you hadn't seen since season 2 and here we are in season 8 and what are you doing here?).
Basically I am disappointed for not passing the exam because I hate not passing exams. And if I had spent some time on MDN going over JavaScript forms I would have definitely passed the exam because I would not have wasted as much time as I did.
The worst thing I can do in this situation is wallow in self-pity and give up on my goal of being a developer. What I will do is take the exam again and NEVER SPEAK OF MY FAILURE...EVER!
Just kidding. Failing that exam is a good lesson to show that I still have a long way to go before I master this skill. The best way to handle it is to get up, dust myself off and get back there and take the test again with more preparation and more confidence.
And better time management.