Intro
If you are not a good reader like me and like videos for your studies I have good news for you. You can still score good without reading much. I did read some whitepapers and quickly realized it wasn’t going anywhere. My attention span for reading is very small and I wish to overcome this soon. Because you will not have videos on every topic and not very detailed as written documents. Especially the new technologies that come. You have to build the habit of reading documentations. Reading and implementing might keep you interested to keep moving if you are like me instead of just reading and reading all day.
So now coming to the point, Let me tell you what I did. I’m working in a startup company who is in a process of becoming a partner for amazon web services (AWS). And you need certain number of certified engineers in order to qualify. So I and my colleagues were asked to get the certificates. We studied about 3 months and it wasn’t all reading as well. We started a sample project along the way. That helped us understand some of the technologies pretty well. Things that we worked on were easy for us. However aws has hundreds of services. Every sample exam had a service that is totally unknown to us. I didn’t find any clear cut defined boundaries of services that you need to know about. Every service seemed to have a potential to be one of the honorable mentions in a question lol.
The meat of the matter
I basically watched a lot of videos, They used to have a learning path with bunch of training videos. While we were studying they launched a new course that basically covers everything and sufficient to get you started. This is the link of that course (AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials) . However I don’t think this course alone will get you good grades. I found aCloudGuru‘s course were very good as they give you hands on experience and you understand the materials better. I watched that course at 1.5x speed in the last 3 days of my exam that really helped refresh my memory and learn new things. I have to give a big credit to Udamy AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner questions answer course . Their 6 sets of questions were pretty tough. And honestly the exam was a lot easier. I finished the exam within about 50 minutes with about 40 minutes to spare. I was worried about any exam time problems such as electricity outage or internet connection drop etc. Alhamdulillah non of that happened. I didn’t even review the answers back as I was so worried about the technical problems.
Exam Day Story
Okay so before the exam day I realized that pearsonvue exam service do not allow exam from Linux operating system (maybe they didn’t build software for that). I use Ubuntu and the windows that I have has problem of getting WiFi disconnected for no reason. You will need to test your system (microphone, camera, internet speed) few days earlier to avoid problems in the exam day. I thought I’m going to do it a day earlier and then I realized that it doesn’t support Linux. So I had to borrow my cousin’s laptop and I was all set for the exam. Next day my exam was at 9:15 am local time and the check in was 30 minutes earlier. I checked in. I had to take pictures of my room. Test my system, provide a picture of my national ID. And then I was set for my exam and the camera turned on and they said I cannot move from my seat even though the exam didn’t start yet. There was a proctor watching me live and he could chat with me as well. Eventually when the exam started I rushed thought the questions as it felt easy and I was worried about any sort of interruptions that may appear. When the exam finished they gave me a short survey and I filled that up. And instantly after that I got my results as PASSED I was very happy! I stood up from my seat to grab my phone that was out of my reach during the exam so I could take a picture that I passed. But the proctor instantly messaged my that I’m not allowed to leave my seat. I replied that I already finished my exam and already passed. He asked my to click on exit. So I did that instantly and didn’t take any picture. And later I was worried what if they disqualify me. Thankfully that didn’t happen later that day I got my certificate and badge from youracclaim . And I think on the third day they sent me my score report.
My Certificate
Competency report
One of my colleague’s exam didn’t start!
One of my colleague’s exam didn’t start at all on pearsonvue. He checked in he’s exam was about 2 hours before us. He checked in and stayed there for about 2 hours basically all exam time. He’s exam didn’t start, proctor didn’t show up. He was devastated. Later when he contacted them they said he didn’t show up. But that wasn’t the case he explained the situation and thankfully pearsonvue was kind enough to refund the money and he sat and passed the exam about a week later. So if you face any technical problem don’t hesitate to contact them and get your $100 back so you could sit again.