AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Aug 01, 2020 • 3 min readAWS • DevOps • Recommended
Primer
I haven't written in a while and that one is on me. I meant to keep this up regularly, but I've been slacking with it to say the least. Who knew that having a family, a full-time job, and responsibilities would take up so much of my time! I'm going to do my best to update regularly going forward.
Validation
Now that I've got that out of the way, the real reason for my post...
After ~6 months of studying, I finally took the AWS Certified Solutions Architect: Associate exam today and I PASSED! I'm incredibly excited about it and really proud of myself for sticking with it.
Here is my certificate and badge. I earned them, so why not show them off!
Hindsight
There were more than a few occasions where I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to finish — the life-altering COVID-19 pandemic, childcare, and above all, my own self-doubt. This was particularly apparent after I completed the Linux Academy training course. That in itself felt like such a huge accomplishment that the thought of pressing on for the real thing just felt like a real uphill climb. This felt even more apparent once I was reimbursed for the training course by my job; as if that was it.
I knew that I'd come this far, and I was willing to come a little further. This was around a month ago.
Growth
Fast-forward to today, the day of the exam. I'd spent the last month taking practice exams every few days and just getting myself prepped for this. The self-doubt hit me hard the last few days. I had scheduled the exam a few weeks ago and after a few of the practice exams, I wasn't feeling all that confident.
At this point, it was getting a bit too late to back out, so I reconciled that if I didn't pass it on the first attempt, I'd take it again. Failing the exam was not the end of the world.
I've never been a good test taker, and that hasn't really changed. This exam was hard, no question about it. I had a few moments where I swore that my eyes glazed over from reading some of these questions. I made it though, and I'm immensely proud of myself for it.
Reflection
I needed to do this because I'm hopeful it will help me in my career. I also needed to do this for me, as a validation of the skill set I know that I have. It's one thing to work on my homelab and do things here and there, but it's another to learn all about cloud architecture.
I won't stop with just this exam. I plan on fulfilling the entire “Junior AWS Cloud Engineer — Entry Level” learning path on Linux Academy. As of the time of this writing, I'm 32% of the way through it.
I can do this, but for now, I feel good.