On Failure

Shocking to hear I know but not everyone passes their Cisco exams first time.

I failed my CCNA first time and most CCIEs fail around three times before they

pass. One colleague at Cisco failed five times in a row and at $1500 per attempt

plus travel, rack time and study manuals he must have lost about $10 000 in

total.

We all react to failure in different ways, we often beat ourselves up and

kick ourselves for not being perfect. I'm afraid that at school we were all

brainwashed to fear mistakes and to believe that failure is bad. We were

punished with an F grade on our papers and fellow students looked down upon us.

The truth is that failure is a part of success. It is impossible to win at

something without also losing. I have lost in relationships, business deals, job

interviews, exams and a lot more but I still regard myself as happy and

successful. I'm actually glad that some things didn't work out actually because

I have ended up doing something different and enjoying it.

Whilst it is not a particularly enjoyable experience to fail at something we

have to face facts that we were not prepared or that some event outside of our

control affected our performance. I have heard from several students that the

router emulation software didn't work properly in the exam which of course was

out of their control. For my first CCNA exam, I didn't really understand

subnetting so I failed. That was in my control but I just took a chance that it

wouldn't be in the exam.

Moving Forward

When you fail an exam have a sit down and have honest chat with yourself. Did

you give it your very best shot? Were you as prepared as you could have been or

did you skip study days and take it on a wing and a prayer? What did you learn

about the exam and yourself?

If you do fail an exam you have lost the money you spent on it and the time

it took to sit it but in the grand scale of things, it wasn't much to sacrifice.

You will have had a chance to see what to expect during the exam, no doubt you

will be asked some of the same questions next time round as well.

Next Steps

I would immediately book the exam for a couple of weeks away. You have built

up enough momentum to actually take the exam so you can spend the time working

on the areas where you need to improve. Don't waste your time studying things

which you found easy. If you can subnet easily then don't do it, what would be

the point?

If you failed dismally (under 600 /1000) then either something went very

wrong or you were not prepared at all. Nerves to affect many exam takers. If you

do suffer from anxiety then use the hypno track on howtonetwork.net downloads or

get some relaxation tracks from a hypnotic inductions web site.

I don't know anybody who has passed every exam first time and I have never

been to a job interview where they asked me if I had to take the exam more than

once. The exam is there to prove your knowledge for a particular role and once

you pass it you will have proved you are up to the level Cisco require to carry

out that role.

Best of luck with your next exam!

Paul Browning