I haven’t studied for an exam in a long time. To advance my career though, I decided it would be best to sit a cloud certification exam for Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Making the decision to embark on the certification was easy. The harder part was reminding myself how to study, again? Back as an undergrad, I did dozens of exams, no problem. Now though, where do I even begin?
I started by asking myself how do I learn best? In my last blog, I mentioned that I am not a video based learner. Rather, I’m a text (reading and writing) based learner. This is my first big piece of advice; find a learning style that really works for you. If you are a verbal based learner, find a study group to discuss with. If you are an audio learner there are readers available to summarize and read out text to you. If you are interactive, then hands-on learning is another option. It’s really finding out the best way you study and building a routine around it.
Another big tip is how to deal with difficult or unfamiliar words. The advice I have for this is to pick a generative AI chatbot and type in the word followed by ELI5 (explain like I am 5). This is how I learned hard networking concepts quickly. What’s more, if one chatbot didn’t make sense, I would switch to another.
The chatbots were also great at generating questions for the exam. I found out through these that Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) was a weak spot for me. On top of generating exams I found that the official study guide for the Professional Cloud Architect exam (by Dan Sullivan) had quizzes too available online. Finally, there are a few paid practice exams out there on sites like Udemy. A note of caution though, some of the answers provided are incorrect so it’s best to ask others or do some research before purchasing them.
Good luck studying!