After AWS Certification - The Journey Continues
Tags: cloud, learning, certification, aws
Published: 2023-08-20 20:39:34

Someone once said that you don't know how far you've gone until you look back behind you. It's interesting how time just passes, and you don't realize how far you've gone the past year. 

I guess this is my follow-up blog post on my AWS learning journey. Don't get me wrong. I still have a lot to learn, but perhaps it's time to acknowledge the amount of growth I've had in learning the cloud ecosystem that is AWS. 

When I decided to take the AWS Certified Cloud Practioner Exam, I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do besides learn AWS. I knew that I wanted to try to learn a specific cloud technology, and knowing that AWS was fairly popular seemed to be my best option. Well, that, and the AWS certification program that I joined was free and would pay for my certification tests.

Unlike some of these blog posts, YouTube videos, and countless other programs that guarantee that you'll pass your AWS certification exams in two weeks, it took me longer to study and pass my AWS CCP exam. Really, two weeks? In that amount of time, I was still trying to understand that the AWS Console, was not an actual console, but a web interface to use or interact with the AWS services. I kept expecting to see a command prompt when I logged into my AWS account. 

In fact, it took me five months to prepare for my AWS CPE. I had a great group of women in my SheClouds (now called CloudUp-for-Her) program. We had formed a West Coast study group and met online every Sunday morning for three or four hours. sometimes less if there was a guest lecturer, usually a volunteer AWS Technical Account Manager. 

We had a great team of women who really took to reviewing the different AWS services and terminology. Most of the time when we were taking exam preps together, we would realize that we had never heard about that AWS product before, and would  research the term and later share with the group the following week. 

After passing the CPP exam, we gave ourselves a break for month, and then started preparing for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA) exam. This was more difficult since it was more about scenarios rather than memorizing concepts. Basically, it tested you on which AWS service provided the most cost efficient solution for the business use case. Also, the CPP exam training modules in AWS Skillbuilder (not sure if they've changed the name) seemed better organized in comparison to the SAA exam. There were specific training videos explaining concepts for CPP, but for the SAA, they were primarily YouTube videos on previous presentations, so they didn't seem cohesive learning modules. They seemed just thrown together. 

Thankfully, I was able to pass the SAA exam and earned my certification. Also, by passing the SAA exam, it automatically re-certifies the Certified Cloud Practitioner exam--meaning it will renew your certification. 

For now, I haven't decided if I will take the next certification, Solution Architect Professional, which I've heard is more difficult. There's so many things that I want to learn, so I signed up for the AWS Ontario Virtual User's Group[](https://www.meetup.com/aws-ontario-virtual-user-group/) Bootcmap. Under the guidance of Andrew Brown, boot camp students learn about the different AWS services to create a Twitter-like clone, but with messages expiring with a predetermined time. 

Also, the reason that I signed up for this bootcamp was to get more hands-on knowledge and guided experience with AWS services, which you really can't get with the certifications. I do utilize AWS services at work, but the boot camp provides a lot of guidance, so that it tries to prevent you from using too much spend (cost) in AWS services.

Hopefully, I'll write more about this experience in another blog post (no guarantees there though. I'm pretty busy with work and life). It's been a great learning experience so far!
 
There are so many different ways to learn about AWS services, and most are free resources, and I've been lucky to have access to them when they were available. 

My thoughts so far? Keep learning. You won't realize how much you've accomplished in your learning journey!