I booked the AWS Certified Developer – Associate exam about half a year ago to help my firm spend some of its training budget. I (kind of) forgot about it until it was too late to. Too late being 2 days prior to the exam.

This was the time when my go-to exam revision tactics are called for – past papers bombard.

Most training courses suggest at least 2 weeks studying time which I don’t have, not even a fraction.

So I got hold on to this Udemy course which essentially was 4 mock exam papers. I dived into those head on. The pass mark is 72%, and the closest one I can get out the 4 was 63%.

No good.

Ill prepared, I went to sit in the exam anyway. And somehow somewhat ended up passing. Now that I am AWS Certified and get to wear this fancy badge.

AWS Badge

Having calmed from the initial ecstasy, I move down to the self-questioning phase. I chanced the whole thing and was hit by fluke.

Given my performance on past papers, me passing was almost a 2 sigma event.

Now I was scared. The danger was me passing by fluke would in turn re-enforce this risk taking behaviour.

Reminds me of a joke. The head of a trading firm placed trades against his head trader’s advice. The head trader told me he hoped these trades didn’t end up profitable, otherwise his boss would think that he was really on to something.

Now that’s a fool of randomness.