I’m an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner!

I took the exam and I passed. I fell behind on blog updates starting about a month ago but I studied up until the day before the test. I was somewhat disappointed in myself for not keeping my schedule but in the end, I passed and that was the main objective. 

Persisting Through Difficulty

First, I want to remind myself and everyone that we are still living through a pandemic. Being a year into it, the abnormality of pandemic life is becoming the new normal. The new normal is still a collective state of crisis, widespread trauma, and loss. Many of us have been not okay for at least the past 12 months.

It’s okay to acknowledge that we aren’t okay. Out of necessity, I’ve developed the ability to be productive at times when I’m in need of rest and care. As I move into a new season of my life, I’m intentional about being kinder to myself. I’m learning to let “good enough” be good enough. I’m learning that I am responsible for asking for the help I need and taking breaks as necessary.

I believe that I hit the “pandemic wall” between my last blog post and this one. I hit the wall, took a moment to recover from the shock, and then went to work on scaling it. To scale the wall means to keep going even if it’s at a slower pace, setting reasonable expectations, focusing on what’s most important, and rationing the energy that is available to me.

All of this is to say, please give grace to yourself and others right now. There’s pressure, even if it’s coming from yourself, to act and perform as if things are normal.  Persist, but don’t forget to rest. Don’t be hard on yourself for the times when you are not operating at full capacity.

What I Would Have Done Differently

Near the end of my study period, I started to have doubts that I was ready for the exam. I didn’t take the course that AWS provides until about a month before the exam and by my test date, I hadn’t even finished half of it.

If I had known what I know now when I started studying, I would have started with that course. It makes sense that AWS itself would have the most up-to-date curriculum for its certifications. The videos are well-produced (with transcripts available) and they also present content in text and illustrations. At the end of each lesson, there are links to documentation so you can go deeper on the topic if you choose to.

What’s Next?

I’ve secured the certification so what’s next for #NikemaLearns? I have a web project to wrap up with a Hugo site, so I’m sure I’ll be learning and re-learning some things for that. For my next blog series, it’s looking like I’ll be learning and playing with Spinnaker and Armory Enterprise. My AWS CLI is installed and my own namespace is ready to go. Should be fun.

I really wanted to finish my video course before writing this blog post, and *spoiler alert* I did it!

I finished the course and took my second practice exam today. I didn’t get a passing score (69.23%, so close), but I did improve since the first attempt.

✨ Check out the previous post in the #NikemaLearns series!

This will be a short blog post. The work I’ve done in the last two weeks isn’t the kind of work that I have much to say about. In preparation for today’s blog, I made sure to finish the course, set up the repo for notes, and I randomly had the idea to recap the lessons from the course using video (transcript here).

At least now the stage is set. I expect that my next post will be more interesting.

The last thing I want to say is video is hard, but that’s okay. We can do hard things! I’m looking forward to feeling more confident on video and more secure in my knowledge of cloud fundamentals. I’ll get there, it’s just a matter of investing the time and effort to do so.

Next Steps

• Continue to work on converting handwritten notes to typed notes at https://aws.nikema.dev
• Start working through AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01) Cert Guide on O’Reilly Learning
• Take practice tests at least weekly. Keep taking them until I am consistently exceeding 70% correct answers
• Once I start consistently passing the practice exams, schedule the real thing.

Thanks for being along on this learning path with me. See you in a few weeks!

Featured Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash

I am geeked out about learning! I get enjoyment out of adding to my knowledge and pushing at the edges of my comfort zone. While continuous learning is important to me, It’s easy to fall out of practice when work and family time demand a lot of my attention.

Part of what excited me about joining the Armory crew was the culture that promotes a growth mindset, experimentation, and psychological safety. One of our employee perks is an educational budget that we can use for professional development.

Since Armory is offering to invest in my education, I’m going to take advantage of this opportunity to level up my skills and learn on the job. I see value in documenting my learning in public, and that’s what I’m announcing today. 

My hope is that my fellow technologists (especially developers) who are new to DevOps will see me wobbling about on my training wheels and feel encouraged to learn more about this field for themselves. 

My Starting Point

I started out making webpages on our family computer as a kid and tech has been part of my life ever since. What I love about our industry is that there’s always more to learn, there’s always the next level. 

As I discover more about myself and my aptitude, it has been a fun challenge to see which areas of tech align the most with my natural abilities and interests. I have the most exposure to programming (in a variety of languages) and front-end development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript). I’ve dipped my toe in lots of things; I’m not an expert in any of them. I consider myself a language-agnostic generalist. 

My relative inexperience with cloud computing and DevOps triggered my insecurities in my early days at Armory. I accept that It’s normal and natural to be wobbly when taking on something new. Starting in a new role and feeling like everything is new is nerve-wracking. It took me a minute, but I’ve started to settle in to remember who I am. 

I trust myself enough to know that I can learn new things and I can do hard things. After investing a few hours into getting up to speed in this new domain, I realize that I’m coming in with more than a blank slate. I have peripheral knowledge and experience. 

My pre-training self-assessment is that I’m an advanced-beginner. I’m solidly in noob territory but I know a couple of things.

My Objective

My first milestone objective is to earn the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification. I chose this certification for several reasons:

• I had a false start to this learning in public blog series because without enough structure, I struggle to stay on task. With a popular certification, I can easily find structured study plans off the shelf.
• I needed a confidence boost. Learning something new and having the receipts of my progress (the blog series and the certificate in this case) is my approach to combatting impostor syndrome. Also Cloud Practitioner is the foundational certification, it feels well within reach of my starting point.
• The more familiar I get with cloud infrastructure and DevOps the more comfortable I’ll be in my role at Armory. I’m looking forward to having a deeper understanding about what we do and how my work serves our vision to “unlock innovation through software.” 

I have access to O’Reilly study materials and the online learning platform provided by AWS. My first step will be to take the practice exams. In my next post, I’ll have a more defined study plan and a projected testing date. 

The Format

Every other Friday I’ll publish a blog reflecting on what I learned and what I did in the preceding weeks. I haven’t decided on the exact format for these posts yet, but I’m aiming for the standard of “really good notes” as defined by Joel Hooks.

Let’s Go!

I’m excited to get back into focused and structured learning. Not only will I learn the foundations of the AWS cloud, but I’ll also get to practice what mentor-in-my-head Angie Jones calls “working out loud.”

I aspire to be a developer advocate and building a public body of work is how I intend to prove I’m capable of that role.

If you want to follow my learning journey on social media, I’ll be using the hashtag #NikemaLearns to talk about it with links to each blog post. 

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash