I come from a non-profit museum background where I do project management work but do not hold the title of project manager. I decided in 2020 to shift my career to Project Management and leave the art world behind. I signed up for a $50 project management course bundle. This was in 2020 prior to the changed rules of requiring a live instructor. I studied the course content and read the PMBOK guide cover to cover in the evenings and on weekends in the fall of 2020. Then I realized in November that the exam content was changing in 2021. I felt I did not have enough time to finish my studies and take the exam in 2020. So I took the free PMI prep course which was offered to applicants that had studied in 2020 but were taking the exam in 2021. Even with that though I decided to purchase the exam simulator as the exam itself had changed and I hadn't done extensive Agile studying (50% of the exam in 2021!). The simulator certainly prepared me for the Agile content and highlighted what I needed to improve on. I decided not to read the Agile Practice Guide because I just did not have time-- I did add terms from the glossary that I did not know to flashcards. I did a lot of flashcard studying at the end. Read through my notes again. And practiced writing down the formulas every night for a month-- but, ha! I only got one formula question. The exam was tough but the simulator prepares you for the content you need to learn and teaches you the stamina you will need to get through it.
Important Lessons learned from the exam:
You cannot check/correct your marked questions after the break has passed. Which makes sense, so people don't cheat. I just did not realize this.
The strikethrough feature to cross out wrong questions is much harder to use on the real exam than on the simulator.
