Hello World,
I'm making this post-exam posting on my thoughts on my exam now with a clear mind and also what are the thoughts going forward. And I am going forward. It wouldn't be Path to OSCP if it ended halfway with me going 'meh, i quit' :)
I've also wanted to take a few days off to get some perspective. And thankfully that did actually work. I'm not feeling low even tho' the ending of the vlog might have been quite... gloomy. It was just the raw snapshot of how I was feeling at the time. And of course if you extrapolate from the ending it would look like I was heading to a bad place and I really do appreciate your reaching out.
Thankfully my mood brightened significantly during the next 24h and the more logical me was emerging through. As I have known from the beginning, 30 day labs is really rushing it. But this was more of a tactical decision to go through with the exam at this point because there would inevitably be a break here in April so the next batch of labs -- should I need them failing the exam -- would also include its own exam opportunity, so it made tactical sense to take the exam at the end of this first batch of lab days just to at least get the first set of exam jitters out of my body and so that I can gauge what I am most lacking.
What I found I was lacking was a good solid set of TTPs - tools, tactics and procedures. The lab mostly focuses on tools and then gives a small example of the T&P parts in the last part where they describe the pen-test, but really you are left to your own devises to figure out what works and especially what works for you.
I have to say that it is still really scary posting those vids - especially the ones where I am clearly seen as less-than-perfect - because there are so many out there posting how they are killing it in different tech skills. It's going to be interesting to see how showing myself as being mortal will affect my future career prospects from LinkedIn and twitter.
But this way of showing myself, warts and all, is aligned with what I was feeling already six months ago: Vulnerability research of the personal kind
It is scary. Especially pushing content on a platform where you know you are easily comparable to your peers, whose armor shines with the force of nine thousands suns and you are telling the world how much you still have to learn. Incomplete. Because that means lacking. Lacking is not something you want to be on the market.