My certifications and thoughts on it
Certifications
As mentioned in my about, I have achieved the following certifications:
What I liked about these certifications is that they provided me with a decent enough knowledge to start off working in IT and also more generally, improved my understanding of concepts and technologies used in the IT world. I won’t really go into too much detail about how I prepared for these, there’s already lots of resources out there that will help people get started. I think though, that how much of this knowledge actually transfers over into work depends on how you prepare for one.
I did make the mistake of just studying for these, until I actually applied the concepts I had learnt into my own projects, amplifying my understanding of how the services worked and interacted with each other. This was definitely the difference maker. As an example, this website currently is being run on AWS :D (and the way I learnt to do it was to integrate this piece of project into my personal learning for certifications).
Learning modes
I also think that the 70-20-10 model is a great introduction and reasoning to why you should try spending a lot of time doing hands-on activities and projects to boost your learning. This has definitely helped me re-shape my perspective on how I learn and what methods are effective for me.
Having said all that, this does take into consideration the fact that you’ll spend a lot more time understanding it, but I feel that the pay offs are much better in the long term.
For the future, I intend on obtaining the AWS developer associate and the AWS sysops associate ones.