Okay, I don’t have the actual degree just yet, but only 46 days after beginning my term, all coursework is graded and complete. Before I write about what’s happened between my last post and now, I want to stress to any readers that my time at WGU was atypical. I do not think other students will have similar experiences to mine. I was in the unique position of being able to focus 100% on school, focusing on it 10-12 hours almost every day, on top of having taken several of the exams before and having had 15 years of professional experience in virtually every subject covered by the program.
At the time of my previous post, I had just wrapped up the last of the CompTIA exams required for graduation and was a little more than halfway through the program. After I made that post, I rearranged my terms to put the classes I had assumed would be easiest and the least time-consuming up front, so I could gradually work my way up to the more difficult ones. The only exceptions were “Practical Assessment” classes, where you needed to submit work like a paper or PowerPoint, unlike the “objective assessments,” which were all exams or professional certifications. I saved the practical assessments for a weekend I knew I’d be out of town, allowing me to plug away on them during vacation downtime instead of trying to figure out how to take an exam from a hotel or beg a library I didn’t belong to for the use of their quiet rooms.
Saving the Best for Last
The courses I saved for last were the ones I knew I would have to properly learn, instead of just reviewing and learning how to “game” and review for the test (key points, topic weights, etc.). Largely, the remaining courses could be slotted into two categories: Databases and Cloud Providers. I had three database courses: two dedicated to non-denominational SQL concepts and scripting, and one specific to administering Oracle databases.
For the SQL courses, one focused on concepts and terminology with a multiple-choice exam (D426 Data Management – Foundations), and the other was about applying SQL scripting; that exam consisted of a few multiple-choice questions, and the rest was writing SQL that would pass some unit tests (D427 Data Management – Applications). I do not have a lot of experience with SQL. When I was much younger, I played around with World of Warcraft private servers that kept world state information in MySQL. Around the same time, I created and administered some phpBB boards that used SQL as a backend. I only used tutorials and GUI tools to do the most basic necessities in both cases. The only time I really delved into SQL was at my law firm job, where I snooped on the SQL commands used to create users in our document management backend so I could automate that part of user creation. Even that was 95% copy and paste and not an actual dive into how SQL works.
Months before I started the term, I watched the entirety of Caleb Curry’s Database Design All-in-One in preparation for these courses, since I had time to burn and knew these would be the only completely new concepts for me to grasp. I cannot possibly recommend this playlist enough. Caleb is super dorky, but his teaching style is fantastic, and the dorkiness comes off as endearing when you realize how solidly he’s able to teach the fundamentals. When I started the course for real, I only used the WGU-provided ZyBooks course. I paid close attention to the course and completed every practice and exercise. This course was fantastic for crafting simple SQL statements and explaining the structures, but I felt it fell short when explaining some essential concepts like the Normal Forms. For these, I rewatched Caleb’s videos and utilized ChatGPT to assist with real-life examples for each form.
After working my way through the whole course in about two days, I took the pre-test for 426 and was super surprised to learn that it was only multiple choice. I assumed it would include writing some SQL statements since that was a large part of the ZyBooks official course material. I cleared the pre-test easily, so I immediately scheduled the real thing and passed without issue. I had read in some Reddit threads that D427 was easy once you passed D426 (some threads suggested doing D427 first, even), so I took the pre-test the next morning and passed that easily as well. This test had actual SQL writing with unit tests. The assessment included a reference sheet with basic command usage, and you could run unit tests inside the exam as well, so as long as you know the basics, it’s a surefire thing to pass.
This left the Oracle DBA class. In reality, I saved this one to be my final class after I took the pre-test without any preparation and felt like I was reading an entirely different language (it was the only pre-test I failed for the entire program). But for blogging purposes, it fits much better here! This class was aligned to Oracle 12c Fundamentals, which is a bummer since 12c was End of Life’d over 3 years ago. It’s no wonder this class was dropped from the program, replacing the Cloud Computing program next month, but I digress. To study for this exam, I used WGU community-created materials to identify the concepts and terms I needed to pass, and Tim Warner’s Pluralsight course to actually learn the content. I used a mix of Quizlet flashcards for Oracle Proper Noun memorization, and NotebookLM’s podcast feature to break down Webmaster Smith’s practice question document to review the content before test time. After three days of nonstop studying, I felt sufficiently crammed and took and passed the exam.
Should I Stay or Should I Go (to a Different Program)?
As I reviewed the remaining cloud-specific courses in my program (and the notes I took on each before I started my term), I realized that one of the Azure courses (the one roughly equivalent to AWS Solutions Architect) was notoriously difficult due to being out of date and lacking readily available review materials. At this point in my progress, I really just wanted to finish the program ASAP and was looking to handle any obstacles to that goal as gracefully as possible, so I called up my program mentor to ask if anything could be substituted in lieu of this specific course. He said that the program requirements were pretty stringent, so my options were to wait for the new Network and Cloud Computing program to become available in October or to swap to the AWS-specific cloud program from the generic version. After comparing the options, swapping to the AWS track made the most sense – it removed the difficult and out-of-date Azure requirement and added two more AWS certifications: SysOps and Developer. Having had a lot of hands-on experience in AWS, it was a pretty easy choice.
Knowing that both of these remaining exams had a lot of overlap with the Solutions Architect (the Venn diagram of Stephane Maarek’s video courses is something wild, like 90% overlap), I immediately bought the TutorialsDojo practice exams for both of them. These exams were the primary method I used to pass the Solutions Architect certification earlier this year – the questions are worded similarly to the real exam. Still, most importantly, the explanations for the correct and incorrect answers are incredibly in-depth and the single best resource for me. The pain and shame of getting a question wrong make sure that I really drill the correct answer (and the reasoning) down to my core.
I started with the SysOps exam, despite the common knowledge of the Internet saying it was the hardest of the Associate-level AWS exams, due to my experience in the sysadmin world. Most of this exam was review from the Solutions Architect Exam, but it added a lot more information from CloudWatch, CloudTrail, and the slew of different billing and usage reporting tools AWS provides. I’d take a couple of practice exams, note my weak sections, then watch the Stephane Maarek video for the sections I was utterly lost on. Where there was a lot of overlap (for example, Budget reports vs Cost and Usage reports), I’d ask ChatGPT to compile a table and hone in on keywords that the exam would use to differentiate between them. The Developer exam worked out similarly, but this time the subjects with renewed focus were AWS X-ray and the CI/CD suite’s tools like CodeDeploy and CodePipeline.
When I took the SysOps exam, I felt prepared beforehand, but walked out completely unsure of whether I’d passed, and the anxiety was compounded by the waiting period between the completion of the exam and the delivery of the results. AWS has a mandatory two-week waiting period to retake any failed test, so a mistake here would be highly costly. I tossed and turned that night before seeing the 2 AM email with the “Congratulations!” notification – I had nothing to worry about, I passed the exam with a score of 819 (the passing score is 720 out of a possible 1000). Ironically, I felt much less gobsmacked by the Developer exam and ended up with a score of 861. And that wrapped up my final course!
I failed to mention this earlier, but I began my Capstone project while registering for the final AWS and Oracle courses. The Capstone consisted of three tasks, walking through a business case for an AWS project. I was able to take my cycling telemetry project and create a real-world example of it pretty easily. I wrote about it like a contractor adding a new premium feature to Strava – working backwards from a completed project made the capstone a fill-in-the-blank exercise. I finished every task with no notes returned from the evaluators!
What’s Next?
I applied for graduation and should receive the official notice within the next few days. My first post-graduation activity will be to simply unwind. I don’t think my crazy sprint was healthy, and I definitely suffered some ill effects from my single-minded focus during the past month and a half. Before I started this program, I worried about my ability to stay on track and focus on schoolwork; I never imagined the other side of the sword: that being self-paced meant that all I could think about was how much work I wasn’t getting done. Every waking moment was consumed by coursework – on bike rides, I listened to review videos and podcasts, in showers, I was quizzing myself, and in bed, I’d continue reading course material (bless my wife for being understanding during this; she’s incredible). But now I’m done, and I think taking well over a week to begin writing this post proves I’ve started to unwind a bit.
I’ll be taking a bit of a solo road trip through New York State over the next week, enjoying the fall weather and tackling some awesome cycling routes along the way. Once I’m home, it’ll be time to recreate my resume (I have a whole lot of new certifications that need to be added!) and begin the job search in earnest. Beyond that, I think I want to keep learning! I’ve proved that self-learning works well for me (overindulgence issues notwithstanding), and I will most likely enroll in WGU’s cybersecurity Master’s program once I’m eligible in January. In the meantime, I’ll likely get a leg up on the additional CompTIA exams needed for that course. I also have an interest in AppSec, and want to integrate some popular tooling in my personal projects – to that end, I might wind up studying for the AWS DevOps certification as well, surely there’s some good habits I can gain from that.
Speaking of personal projects, I want to add DynamoDB features to my automatic cycling telemetry project and a web front-end for my firewall policy translator. I’ll likely work on those as an excuse to become more handy with GitHub actions and other CI/CD AppSec tools. I’m sure I’ll also dream up some other fun personal project in the near future!