In the comments section of the previous post I mentioned that many accredited pros rave about the ABC exam. Then, a case in point came over the transom, via a LinkedIn notice of a post on the IABC Café website. Communication consultant Mark Schumann, ABC, remembers his accreditation exam in a recollection that's actually more typical than not in its wide-eyed, far-out-man mysticism on the subject.
I excerpt:
I stayed out too late.
The night before I took the accreditation exam—at the US District 6 conference many years ago—I intended to go back to my room and study. …
But I was at an IABC conference and, well, I stayed out too late.
So, the next morning, as I walked the hallway outside the exam room, I kicked myself for not preparing. And then I remembered something a seasoned ABC had told me, that, 'when you take the exam, all the study won’t make a difference, you either know it or you don’t.' And so, with those words in mind, I walked in, sat down, pulled my chair up to the manual typewriter I would use (yes, manual) and thoroughly enjoyed the next few hours of expressing every passion and thought and idea and conviction I have about this profession we work in. ….
I stayed out too late another evening, a few months later, when I learned I passed. …
Well, David Wells once said he pitched a no-hitter while drunk and Dock Ellis threw a perfect game on acid.
A call to sober takers of the IABC exam. I know you can't reveal its specific contents—have they changed since Schumann hammered his soul into his Underwood?—but is it really as cosmically stimulating as all this?
If so: I'll take it!