Imad Hassan, CCIE #45159

What an adventure... After lots of work, patience, training and tea, I finally reached the goal. I got it. The number I was trying to get for 3 years. This long way to get this certification pushed me to want more and more knowledge. Thanks to Brian McGahan! I still have your voice in my head from the great videos. Finally, the best piece of advice I can give is to stay motivated and be confident in your knowledge and skills for this exam, and this extends to the day of the lab itself. With only an hour left of test time, my routers crashed I thought for sure I would fail; verifications weren't succeeding, and I felt overwhelmed by everything. I already started thinking of future attempts, weeks and weeks of lab workbooks, and whether I?d ever be able to pass this test. I asked the proctor about this issue and took a quick break to the bathroom, thought about all the people confident in me to pass, and came back to work. Luckily Cisco re-newed my session and then I loaded the configs that I had temporarily saved in Notepad files during the lab. Luckily all the devices started working and all my verifications checked out. Seeing all those check marks felt like a huge weight off my shoulders. When time was called, I left my desk with a smile, a big change from just 30 minutes earlier. Basically, we all know the exam is very demanding, but don?t let the stress take over, and keep going until the end. I?m still getting used to the fact that I will no longer be studying 6-12 hours every night, but I have to say it is an amazing feeling so far. All the sacrifices in my personal life were worth it, and now I can go back to living, with a CCIE number to show for it. I hope my story can keep you all motivated to keep studying hard and working towards this goal we all strive to achieve. I wish you all good luck and productive study time.