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AWS: Passing the Cloud Practitioner Exam During a 2-Year Childcare Leave
I want to record how I maintained my motivation for studying and managed to pass the exam during my two-year childcare leave!
Hello! I'm Yasuna, currently on childcare leave for my daughter.
It's been about two years including both maternity and childcare leave.
I was naive to think at first that since I wasn't working, I could study various things like programming and AWS (lol).
Without help from those around me, I couldn't even manage childcare, let alone study.
After my daughter passed one and a half years old, started walking, was weaned, and gradually became less clingy to me,
I was finally able to secure focused study time and pass the Cloud Practitioner exam.
Introduction
As a background, I had been studying basic engineering knowledge, including AWS, for about a year.
I had reached the point of deploying a simple web app using EC2 and S3,
but I had never studied AWS in earnest.
However, I was very attracted to Linux commands,
and I hoped to properly work with AWS someday.
[Age 0–1] Overwhelmed with childcare; no place for studying
It's exactly as the title says (lol).
Childcare is truly endless.
Even when they say they're "sleeping," they wake up every 1–2 hours,
and even while they're asleep, I'd worry that a towel might be over their face and they couldn't breathe,
so there was no way I could study calmly (I'm venting).
But pushed by the feeling that I wanted to—or rather, had to—study, I ended up clicking "buy" on some Udemy courses.
Anyone can buy them ←
Udemy courses I bought:
I was able to pass by studying only these two courses.
However, after doing a little bit post-purchase, I left them untouched for over six months...
Time just kept passing as my Udemy "backlog" grew...
[Age 1–2] Started sleeping through the night after weaning
Yes, the chance arrives suddenly.
My daughter, who passed the age of one and gradually evolved from a baby to a toddler!!!
Once she was weaned, she almost stopped waking up in the middle of the night!!!
I was incredibly happy about this.
When I suddenly had time, the first thing I did was watch all the TV dramas on TVer.
But the season ended and all the shows reached their final episodes. "Shinhannin Flag" was interesting... (Wait, that's not it).
I opened my computer for the first time in almost a year.
"Sigh, childcare leave ends in six months, and I haven't been able to study anything..."
To avoid that, I felt I had to create some kind of output starting now...
But I didn't have the confidence to finish a personal development project,
so I wondered if there was something better...
Oh... maybe I can still get an AWS certification!!!
This is where my backlog of Udemy courses comes in. Sorry to keep you waiting.
There was a practice exam I had done just a tiny bit of when I first bought it,
and when I tried it again, I got about half right, which gave me some motivation.
Here is an example of the transition of my actual practice exam scores!
So even someone who started at 24% can get up to 92%. I'm moved.
And then, I studied AWS seriously for one month
In total, the actual study period was about a month and a half. After passing, what I realized is that having a solid block of study time is absolutely necessary.
I wasn't skillful enough to study during small gaps of time. I was finally able to acquire the knowledge once I could secure 1 to 2 hours of uninterrupted time a day and keep that up for a month.
My study method involved doing the Udemy courses, but since going through them in order would take a very long time, I only tried hands-on AWS tasks for things that didn't click during the lecture part.
There were many lecture materials, and since reading them on the web made my eyes tired, I printed them out to read. Since black-and-white printers aren't that expensive, I printed a lot of them.
Thanks to focusing intensely for a month, I started scoring over 90% on all the practice exams. At this point, I finally applied for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam.
Panicking on the day of the exam
I applied for my first exam through Pearson VUE, which supports Japanese. I chose the at-home testing style.
I'm fairly confident in my English, but since I'm the type to panic if trouble occurs, I chose the Japanese-speaking proctor option as a risk hedge.
As it turned out, choosing Japanese was a great decision!!!
I ran into serious trouble.
Specifically, the test system glitched and crashed in the middle of the exam, and I couldn't continue after that...
I took the exam on a MacBook Air, but it was very sluggish from the start. It seems like some update started running in the background and wouldn't stop, which caused the issue.
Since the crash happened after I had finished answering all the questions, I explained the situation to the proctor and asked to end the exam and have it scored.
The proctor's response was that they would investigate first and then decide if the test could be accepted.
I ended the exam feeling dejected, but two days later, I received an email saying I passed! I was so happy because I thought it was over for sure.
I'd be happy if this article is even slightly helpful to you!!!
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