Summer 2021 Update: Home Office, MCT, and SC-300
Summer 2021 has been a busy one for me, what with my new office and my son about to start school for the first time, it has been difficult to find a balance between finding time to study and write blogs alongside the chaos of general home life. It has meant the blog has suffered a little with no regular updates, therefore thought it was worth just providing a quick update. Amongst all the chaos, it hasn’t stopped me from taking and passing SC-300: Identity and Access Administrator and also getting the Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) accreditation.
Home Office
The biggest change over has been the addition of my home office, since the pandemic hit in March 2020, apart from being on Furlough my work from home life has consisted of either working from my 4-year-old son’s bedroom or on the sofa or even at points on my beanbag in the garden. It feels like an age since we have had a dedicated space for work, which hasn’t had to be taken down on a night or generally in the way, so the decision to get a Garden Office was a huge one financially but also practically.
Having ordered it in April 2021 from Taunton Sheds, as you can imagine the backlog has been huge so it was a 12-week wait for it to be delivered and installed, but it is in and decorated with the next steps to actually furnish and put some pictures up.
I have now been working out of it for nearly 3/4 weeks now and it’s been great to have this new space that I can call my own, but also share with the family. There are still things to do, such as paint the skirting boards, get some blinds, get a heater and finally get a new desk, but these are all things that can wait.
The other advantage this space gives me is the opportunity to start thinking about recording some YouTube Vlogs etc, something I have been keen to do but honestly don’t even know where to start. So if anyone wants to give me advice I am willing to listen and take it on board.
MCT
Well if someone had asked me 2 years ago whether I would consider having a Microsoft Certified Trainer accreditation, I would have probably laughed at them, but here I am with an MCT accreditation.
Why have I done it? Well recently having starting to take some Microsoft Certifications, I have discovered that actually a lot of the resources I have used have come from blogs and not directly from a single Microsoft course. This has then led me to write a few of my own study guides for some of the certifications I have passed recently, such as AZ-104, MS-500 & AZ-500. I plan to continue to write these when I pass new certifications.
On top of this, I have also found myself mentoring some friends and past colleagues running various ad-hoc training courses over the years, as well being asked to perform ad-hoc training as part of being an IT Consultant.
The MCT community is one I have always admired and I am very proud to be a part of it and look forward to contributing within this space, as well as helping organisations get the best value out of their Microsoft Suites and grow the individuals within their teams.
SC-300: Identity and Access Administrator
Having moved into the security space earlier this year with Open Systems, after the MS-500 and AZ-500 security exams, the next logical step was to start looking at the SC series of exams. In theory, I should have started with SC-900: Security Fundamentals, but instead decided to go for the SC-300 exam, which gets the Microsoft Certified: Identity and Access Administrator Associate.
I found this exam to have several overlaps with AZ-500 and MS-500 exams which I took earlier this year, this made studying for the exam easier, as I was just consolidating a lot of the information from those exams. Now I am at a point where I have achieved 5 exams this year so far and starting to look at my next exams, was aiming for 6 exams this year, so one more to go and that target will be achieved.
The only issue is going to be the renewals… could be a busy few years of renewing the certifications.
