I took the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam this morning…

Photo credits: awslagi.com

I’m going to be honest..not that I’m not honest any other time, but just thought I’d start with an alluring statement to draw you into what I’m about to say.

So, I didn’t actually study for this exam.

Here’s why.

This all goes back to high school. I really have a hard time with sanctioned education, and we could go back and forth on this topic but this isn’t the time.

I was notorious for skipping class or showing up for a couple of minutes then finessing my exit from the class without having a pass. Here’s the interesting part about my ephemeral presence in a particular class, I would end up going to the library to…well, read.

From time to time I’ll hang out in the lunch room or go to a gym period and mess with a few people, but I would spend majority of a class period in the library learning about the subject that I was in class for during that period.

Whatever the topic was, I learned it…on my own.

That’s how I learned, essentially. Many people would hear this and call me a rebel or undisciplined…oooh I like the second one better because I got a rebuttal for that!

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Top 3 test scorers in all of my classes

That’s right. Typically number 1 or 2. In HONORS and or ADVANCED PLACEMENT (AP) classes.

I was cocky about my intelligence but it wasn’t intelligence that I possessed, it was merely common sense.

This is what I applied to the exam I took today.

Typically, teachers/professors put the answer(s) in the questions of your exam and unless you have to physically write out your responses, the answer was right there. The technical terminology is the actual answer, but it’s explained in a keyword format throughout the question.

How I perceived the exam

Now, I’m not saying this was the same design for the exam I took today but I pretty much took what I’ve been practicing for the last couple months in AWS, and whatever situational problem they conveyed, I just had to figure out which tools have I usually used thus far.

ALB, Lambda, S3, S3 Glacier, MySQL, VPC, PostgreSQL, IAM, SQS, NAT, EC2 instances, and so on are terms I was pretty familiar with going into the exam.

What the test came down to were a bunch of situational questions (of course; it’s for becoming a certified solutions architect) where if you knew how certain acronyms generally perform during a deployment, you could answer the question.

A couple were a little tricky not going to lie.

For the most part, though, since I decently understand those acronyms I mentioned, I was able to figure out what the “solution” (pun intended) could be.

The test was also comprised with questions asking you how you would “save money” performing a particular deployment.

I took the whole time, nonetheless. Down the last :01.

At this point, I have the next 5 business days to find out how I really did. So until then, wish me a great outcome!

Thank you for reading and I hope you’ll continue to join me in my journey as a budding tech professional and Founder of Cigar Chef LLC. STICKS UP!!!