I'm an AWS Certified Solutions Architect!

I'm officially certified!

I just passed my exam and am now an AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate. Check out my badge that proves it!

This is is something I've been wanting to do for a while now. My company encouraged me to get the cert, so I'm glad I finally was able to dedicate some time and energy to achieving this. I've used AWS a lot at work as well as for some personal projects. I really like the platform! I recently switched away from Netlify to hosting this blog from an S3 bucket behind a CloudFront distribution, which I plan to write about soon.

Getting myself prepared for the exam was definitely a little harder than I expected. I sort of expected with my existing experience I could study a little and then waltz right in - not so. I have to credit this Udemy course by Stephane Maarek, which was provided by my company and helped shore up the gaps in my AWS knowledge, as well as these excellent practice exams from TutorialDojo which I utilized heavily to get myself ready.

Taking a lot of practice exams was absolutely key for me. You almost have to learn how to take the exam as much as you have to learn AWS in order to pass. The exam is all very verbose scenario-based questions, it really helps to expose yourself to a lot of questions so you learn how to parse them easier and understand what kind of answers they're looking for.

Maybe the most challenging part was actually sitting for an exam for over 2 hours - I don't think I've done something like that since college! It can definitely be mentally taxing. I'm just glad it's over and I have my shiny new certificate to show off!