Contributed by the PROC CERTIFY duo: Christine Kjellberg & Stacey Hamilton
As the days draw closer to our certification exam, we’ve put together our top-ten list of things (PROC Certify–related) that we are very thankful for (drum roll please!):
- SAS Global Forum afforded us the opportunity to take a much needed hiatus while SAS folks were either at Global Forum or preparing for it. We came back to studying with some renewed energy!
- SAS Press books. Gotta love them (we’re biased, of course). Where would we be without—especially—the Base Certification Prep Guide, Ron Cody’s Learning SAS by Example, and Michelle Burlew’s Examples books?
- Our evil ruler blog editor, Kirsten Hamstra, who kept our blog post submissions on track and turned us into indentured servants happy and productive contributors to the Open Mic blog.
- SAS Education! What would we have done without our Education department’s Self-Paced e-Learning! We have used “SAS Programming 1: Essentials” mostly, but we have dabbled in the “Programming 2: Data Manipulation Techniques.” With their interactive demos, practices, and end-of-lesson quizzes, it’s no wonder these courses have won awards! They’ve certainly helped us understand SAS programming concepts.
- All of the studying, worrying, meeting, blogging, gnashing of teeth. It’s almost over. Blissfully over.
- And, SAS Education, again! We need to mention what started this craziness. After taking an instructor-based course, “Programming I,” we knew that we had to learn more about SAS programming and its capabilities.
- Technical support! Jan Squillace, in particular, was a great help. She invited us to sit with her as she took customers’ calls and checked up on us several times afterward. We admire the depth and breadth of her knowledge about SAS.
- Our study partners! We’ve had a couple along the way, and through all of our studying we’ve managed to have a little fun, too. We’d like to thank Mark, Joel, and Fred for all the help.
- Blog and Facebook comments from SAS users, SAS Press authors, friends, and colleagues that guided and encouraged us, helped us to solve some sticky problems, and overall made us feel like we could maybe, possibly succeed at this. The encouragement and support were incredible.
- Finally, each other. From day one, we have been in this together and it has been a team effort! And did we mention that it’s almost over?????
Good luck to all of those taking the exam and happy studying!
5 Comments
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Hi Michael,
I answered the questions in the order they were asked. I didn't even know that I could mark some for review until I was almost finished. I then quickly went back through and changed a couple of answers based on some syntax that I saw in later questions. We used the "dead tree" guides too, but sometimes we skipped over the exercises and ran straight to the quizzes. That was obviously a bad idea.
I can imagine the time that is going into your upcoming book. But it will all be worth it!
Stacey
Just curious: When you took the test, did you answer the questions in order or did you skip around?
As for me, I surrendered my license to PROC LIFE OUTSIDE WORK when I started writing for SAS Press. But it is a great experience, although I'm learning how different it is to write about SAS in contrast to coding for it.
I used the SAS study guides - the big "dead tree" guides and did all the exercises.
Hi Michael,
Unfortunately, we didn't pass the exam. It was just a little too much for us. I think we worked a little too hard on PROC RASTINATE prior the exam, as well as PROC REGULAR JOB and PROC LIFE OUTSIDE OF WORK
But we might try again. Who knows?
Stacey
Congrats on the passing. Now you can get back to PROC RASTINATE.