Should I Certify?

Hi All,

I am looking for a bit of advice with my IT career relating to Certifications. I have now been a Technician for 3 years and was promoted to senior technician in June 2020. I work in the Education sector and have spend the last few years in the Cisco networking and Windows Server realm. Over the past 2 years, I have built and now manage a multiple Cisco and one HP network for schools, built virtualised server environments and AD domains with all the bells and whistles. But always in the back of my mind wondered if I should get certified to show my networking "expertise".

I have been working on the CCNA on and off for the past few years, but work hours cause issues with studying in the evenings and ultimately cause me to not be in the mood to study.

I also unfortunately, test very poorly. Under test conditions, I am not good at answering the exam style questions and remembering specific details on the spot. However if I am having a conversation with someone about networking technologies, I can answer questions and build on my answers without any issues. I also practice these technologies when building networks for the schools (obviously).

With my now three years of experience and 1 year of that being senior, deployed and managed many IT infrastructure projects, is it still worth me attempting to get certified at this point? I have already begun learning about more advanced topics like BGP, MPLS and L2/L3 WAN technologies in my LAB.

My end goal is to move from the Technician world to be more focused on Infrastructure (networking and servers) engineer roles. However am doubtful in my success without having a Cert to my name.

Can anyone provide any support?