Review Every Miss Against Its Domain

Why this matters

Candidates re-take mocks and re-miss the same tasks because review stops at the right answer. The right answer teaches nothing; the failure class teaches everything. Knowledge misses need study, method misses need drill order, time misses need flag discipline. Different medicine per diagnosis.

Concepts

Classify first, map second. Knowledge means the fact was absent (wrong default port range, forgotten reclaim rule). Method means the fact was present but the drill order failed (debugged routing with a broken selector). Time means the task was abandoned or rushed with the skill available. Then map each miss to its domain and weight the pile: three storage misses hurt less than two troubleshooting misses at triple weight.

Each miss becomes exactly one drill: a five-minute exercise reproducing the failure shape, recorded in a miss log with date. Re-run old drills before new mocks; a drill that passes twice retires. The log across mocks shows the curve: total misses falling is vanity, weighted misses falling is progress.

Worked example

A mock with five misses, reviewed properly:

Miss 1 (storage, knowledge): forgot NodePort range -> drill: 5 range questions, retired in 2 days
Miss 2 (networking, method): debugged DNS with broken endpoints -> drill: endpoints-first rule card on the desk
Miss 3 (troubleshooting, time): monster eaten 22 min, two tasks abandoned -> drill: 2-minute flag rule with timer
Miss 4 (architecture, knowledge): etcd restore dir trap -> drill: restore sequence recited 3x
Miss 5 (workloads, time): slow YAML typing -> drill: dry-run generation sprints
Weighted score: 2 troubleshooting misses dominate -> next week is M05 drills

One page per mock, same shape every time. Patterns across pages decide the study week, never feelings.

Exam notes

Method misses repeat most stubbornly because knowledge feels like the fix: it is not, the drill order is. Time misses hide as knowledge gaps (rushed tasks look unlearned): separate them by asking whether the skill existed with more minutes. And retire drills explicitly: an unretired log grows into guilt instead of training.