As the title suggests, I failed my first exam yesterday, the AWS - Advanced Networking Specialty. I was pretty dejected coming out of the exam, all the time I had spent studying, for naught, not to mention the AUD 440 that it cost me to sit the exam. This post is a recap of my study for this exam, my opinions, now that I have had a good nights sleep and finally my attitude going forward.

My not so successful, study plan -Linux Academy course -re:Invent 2015 NET406 -re:Invent 2016 NET402 -re:Invent 2016 NET305 -aws-amazon-vpc-connectivity-options.pdf whitepaper -integrating-aws-with-multiprotocol-label-switching.pdf whitepaper

Whats that you say? I shouldn’t have attempted the “Advanced” course if I didn’t have networking fundamentals down? Well. Good point. In my defence, I have been working with VMware Virtual networking for many years now, so I felt like I knew enough, I didn’t. The old saying comes to mind “you don’t know, what you don’t know” and for this exam, I didn’t know enough fundamentals of routing, switching and networking.

As this is a blog post about failing I will keep it brief, I just wanted to say that the only real failure is giving up, I continued to study my ass off for this certification and managed to pass it a month later. You can see my full study guide linked below.

//EDIT I passed! see my full study guide fail

If there is anything you can take away from this post, it is that failure is part of success, it is an unfortunate stepping stone on the pathway to your goals, whatever you do, don’t quit, keep your head down, keep working and you will achieve your goals!

Until next time…