My CKA Exam Nightmare

erictoner

Hey folks,

I had a lot of issues with the CKA exam yesterday. It started off with me having to go through the desk check twice; the app closed because it "couldn't detect the camera" even though I could see it working perfectly on the PSI app. After 2 desk checks, 30 minutes, I'm finally in the test and the problems keep piling up.

I notice some minor issues; environment is a little clunky and shortcuts aren't working. The "Find in Page" shortcut in particular is necessary for finding keywords in the extensive Kubernetes docs, so I asked my proctor for help. I wait ~5 minutes, tech support isn't available to come into the chat so my proctor advises me to call PSI tech support. PSI doesn't really understand my issue and recommends a reboot; I'm hesitant but I convey this info to my proctor and close out the app.

I reboot; check my keyboard, its fine on my laptop but the issue was always in the testing environment - tech support told me they don't handle tech requests inside the environment at the end of this call. At this point I'm ready to move past it. I go through my 3rd desk check. Finally ~30 minutes later - I'm back in the test and find that the timer was running the whole time, even when my app was closed.

Proctor and PSI tech support tell me they're unable to do anything about this - and don't make any recommendations on how to fix it. No apologies or efforts to fix the time; that had to come from me. They don't care that this basically means failing the test and losing this money.

Finally, two hours into me trying to start this test I ask how to get a retake. I'm not eating the cost of this exam attempt because my proctor doesn't know to pause. Tech support and proctor begrudgingly agree that I should request a retake from trainingsupport.linuxfoundation.com. As I'm leaving the test he unpauses to let me close the app. Someone added 12 minutes back. So not only do they have the ability to add time; but they were trying to cover their mistakes by not pausing earlier and hoping I would miss it.

tl;dr 3 desk checks, proctor forgot to pause my test during troubleshooting, keyboard shortcuts still don't work; proctor added time back at the last moment before I quit the app (to cover his own mistake?)

mstepien

Hi @erictoner,

We are very sorry to hear about your experience. Our Customer Support team will assist you with rescheduling your exam.

Best,
Magda