The story of how I gloriously failed my CTI CErtification exam.

OK. If we've talked or you've read my stuff, you're probably familiar with the fact that I failed my CTI Certification exam.
In fact I wear that badge proudly. I will even go so far as to say that was the single most impactful event in my coach training. Has I "gotten by" and passed, I most likely would have been a good coach. But I truly believe that BECAUSE I failed, I am a great coach.
Want to know why?
What's the whole story? Well, read on.

It begins two days before the exam.
Well, it actually began way before that, with all the hours of practicing, and guerilla coaching, and reading and preparing and working with my coach. But there comes a point when, "You know what you know," and it was eventually time for me to make the drive from Chicago to Minneapolis to take my Certification exam. (This was in the days when you had to schedule an entire day to take your exam live, in person, and you were videotaped.)
My wife came along for support, as well as make a nice little vacation out of it. In order to cover the distance and not be totally wiped out for the exam, we split the journey into two days.
After only about an hour on the road, we began to feel bad. By they time we reached the halfway point in Madison, we were both consumed with what seemed to be an ugly flu--symptoms of fever, drainage, coughing and body aches. We were completely miserable, but with so much at stake I had to continue. All my family, friends, Certification classmates and coaching colleagues (including everyone I had done practice sessions with--all 50 of them) were counting on me. I couldn't let them down.

The next day we got up, endured breakfast (when we really wanted to stay in bed the whole day), and experienced the worst drive I've had to endure, feeling miserable and fluish, feverish and draining all the way. We pulled into Minneapolis by about 4:00 in the afternoon and immediately took a nap in the hotel. At one point, we managed to drag ourselves out to find some soup (that was all we could even think about eating), and then it was back to bed to sleep the rest of the night away.

When we woke the next morning, we were actually feeling much better, but still on the weakened side. So I left my wife to sleep and heal in the hotel, while I made my way to the other hotel where the exam was taking place.
An I walked into the exam room, I discovered that I already knew two of the three examiners. ("Man, this is going to be easy," I thought. "I got two leaders in my corner already.") But I also knew that I was still recovering from my sickness, and I needed to conserve my energy if I was going to make it through the entire day. During the opening circle, I announced to the group my situation, so they would know what was going on. And perhaps they might even take it into account, knowing that I was coaching in a weakened state. (I mean, not every coach can do that, right? That's got to count for extra points or something.) So when it came time to decide who was going to do the oral exam first, I immediately jumped on it. My plan was to get it out of the way so I could just relax and then take my time with the written part.