"Certifications ain't shit!"
What a way to start my first blogpost? Haha... but i'll explain.
Before I get to why I took the AWS cloud practioner exams, you should know, that I have been on the self learning journey in tech for about 6 months now. And I should tell you that its been fun most days, but tiring at other times. Then, there is the unending cycle of losing and finding motivation. Just like every other beginner, I had dabbled into a lot of areas, but then, I seemed to fall in love with Devops and cloud services.
Linux command line interface, bash Scripting, containerization technologies and of course the word on everyone's lips: kubernetes. I want to learn all of them. of course, it felt and still feels at this time, like a daunting task. but you're not here to hear my not-yet-success story. "How then did AWS come in?" you may ask. Simple answer: Chance. I knew AWS was the biggest cloud providers around, but I was still learning other tools and hadn't cared to learn about their services. But, I got a scholarship from AWS as part of the Sub-Saharan Africa Challenge. I should let you know that it was during my preparation for this exam, that I found out that my first statement on this blog post is wrong. Certifications are very good knowledge solidifiers. why? follow me.
How did I prepare? and in 6 days? first of all I went to YouTube. I found an old video from freecodecamp. it was just 4 hours long. Most of the information there was purely exam centric of course. but it gave me a solid overview on what I was expected to know about for this exam. Then, I went back to aws.amazon.com and studied their free resources to solidify some shallow concepts. After this, I went through whiz labs practice questions, referencing AWS documentations from time to time. That was it. But guess what? I learnt more about general cloud concepts in those 6 days than I had ever done in any 2 weeks timeline throughout my 6 months start/stop journey. And it's easy to understand why.
Getting certifications require a similar learning style to the one we are used to in traditional school systems. and I found out because these three steps I used to pass my AWS cloud practitioner exam, are the three steps I successfully used to pass every single exam I wrote in school. so, while learning by self teaching can be tough, using a method we are used to from basic education structure helps make it natural. The three steps I employed and would recommend for not just AWS, but every exam are:
- Skim through and understand what knowledge bases, you are to be tested on
- Refer to reliable books or videos to solidify concepts.
- Attempt sample questions and refer back to the reliable learning materials.
That, right there, is how I became an AWS cloud practitioner and while, I plan to now, use this knowledge to carry out an AWS based personal project soon, I would recommend this certification for all tech based business owners, developers as well as business consultants and CEOs because the cloud is the future of all web based services and there is no better way to understand why, how, when to migrate to cloud based services, as well as how to use cloud based services for smoother and more profitable web based business services.