After failing the CCNA with 58%, I didn't just have to face myself. I had to face everyone around me. My wife, my kids, my father, my colleagues. And from that low point, something unexpected was born.
The reality of CCNA studying: chaos, cigarettes, and eyes that won't stay open.
Coming Home Empty-Handed
My wife was expecting me to pass. After all, she had been walking on tiptoes for weeks. The house had been quiet. She had kept the kids away from my study area. She had made sacrifices.
And not only her. My three kids were so curious about that day, expecting their idol to come home with a winning face and certification news. They had watched me struggle, disappear into books and screens, and they believed in me.
Even my 76-year-old father was affected. He kept coming by to visit, but couldn't really chat with his 49-year-old son who had suddenly, out of nowhere at his age, gone back to studying like a university student.
And then there were my colleagues...
The Office Politics Nobody Talks About
Here's a mix of feelings that nobody prepares you for. In any company, some people want to climb. I was probably seen as some sort of threat - a guy chasing a CCNA certification, trying to prove something.
I still don't know how many of them were genuinely unhappy about my failure, or secretly relieved that I couldn't prove myself. You feel it in the small things - the way someone asks "so how did it go?" with just a hint of something in their voice.
But there was one person who stood out. Ion. He actually believed in my effort. He helped me all the way through the journey with technical advice and support. When you're struggling, you find out who your real supporters are.
The Kitchen Conversation
My wife sat me down and told me straight:
"Adrian, the whole house has been a mess. We were all silent, but we have to move forward now. If you're going to keep studying, please do not do it in my kitchen anymore."
Fair enough. I had to stop whining and find a different approach.
The Memory That Changed Everything
I remembered something from a year ago. My driving license had been taken for speeding - a three-month punishment. The only way to reduce it was to pass a test. So I found a website with practice quizzes.
In just 3 days, I went from scoring 5-7 out of 15 questions to passing with 14 out of 15.
That's when it hit me: this is what I was missing. Not just a way to learn, but a way to evaluate my knowledge. What were my weak spots? My weak chapters? If I know subnetting, let's move on to automation. And so on.
The ChatGPT Experiment (That Failed)
First, I went to ChatGPT and asked it to build quizzes for me. After one day, I realized the questions were repeating. The AI was just cycling through the same concepts. Obviously, this wasn't the right way.
So CertAce started not from an idea, but from a need.
Building What I Needed
Every feature came because it had to be there:
- First: 80 questions quiz - Full exam simulation
- But sometimes time is limited - So I added 30 and 50 question options
- Chapters to focus on - So you can practice only specific topics
- Timed exam mode - No more running out of time like I did
- Instant answer reveal - See the correct answer right after you respond
- Wrong answers only - Review just the questions you got wrong
And so on, and so on. Everything came as a need while practicing CCNA questions. Every implementation came with testing - I was both the developer and the user.
The Transformation
By the time I was done with most of the implementations, something incredible had happened. My knowledge went from 40-50% to 80-90%.
The app wasn't just helping me track my progress - it was teaching me. The act of building it, testing questions, identifying weak areas... it forced me to truly understand the material.
The Final Week
The exam day was approaching. Four days before, I switched to labs. Fingers all over Packet Tracer, practicing VLANs, trunk and access ports, port channels...
The last two days, I prepared for the worst lab - the first one, as I remembered it from my failed attempt. It had everything: DHCP, NAT, DHCP relay, standard ACL, extended ACL, SSH version 2 (who remembers you need to specify SSH versions in labs?), OSPF configuration...
I practiced everything.
The Numbers Don't Lie
In between the labs, I was using CertAce constantly:
- Weakest score: 76%
- Best score: 97%
- Total quizzes in the last week: 64
- 100% score: Never (and that's okay)
I was going through questions like a knife through butter.
The Night Before
One day before the exam, I was contemplating my scores. Proud of how far I'd come. Thinking... what can they do to me?
I had huge confidence. But at the same time, inside me, I was terrified.
I knew this was it. No more excuses. No more "I wasn't ready." I had done everything I could. The app had shown me exactly where I stood.
Continue reading: Exam Day: The Second Attempt That Changed Everything →