My title pretty much says it all. Tuesday I dragged my very sore human to a test center and took my CCP test. I was nervous as all get out, I was still watching videos before leaving the house (on billing), and I felt pretty unprepared to be honest.\ Given all of this I'm prepared to tell you some tips and tricks for studying/how to focus your time. Recap ----- You can check out my [1 week out post](/one-week-out/).\ \ TLDR: I started studying at the beginning of this month, I was nervous, and I studied a bunch. I will say there was like 1 week of not studying just because life happened. Preparation\* ------------- My original suggestions was: 1. A Cloud Guru - PLEASE DO THE LABS 2. AWS white papers 3. AWS Training 4. AWS Console I still stand by this but I'm I want to propose another option: 1. A Cloud Guru - PLEASE DO THE LABS 2. Pay for a practice test 3. AWS Training 4. AWS Console 5. AWS white papers At this point in my life I like to get a sense of how test look (again young me didn't care). A cloud guru has some practice test that I find fairly useful. These test helped me realize that I needed to be in a non-dev mindset the whole time. I'm a developer so sometimes that switch could take awhile. If you can't afford more than a **month** (please remember that) of a cloud guru then save \$10 and just get the amazon practice test. Aws training is one of the fluff areas. I say take it because you are learning from Amazon folks BUT I'm also not mad if you skip it. The way my mind works I don't think it helped me at all because I didn't recall any of it. It could be a lil more interactive for me. If you are ok with dry lectures with random videos thrown in then go for it. Now, the aws console is slept on. If you have never used AWS and you didn't do them labs like I suggested in the cloud guru course then you **DEFINITELY** need to be in the console. Now if you run up a bill doing this without guidance that's on you.\ This is important because you need to know what is global vs regional. What are the important things to set for these different services? What is a real service vs something they might use to trip you up? Do you understand pricing? Do you know how to evaluate service types based on need? If you answered "no" to anything above then I suggest you follow steps 1-3 first. Finally...how can I say this\...them white papers whack!!!! You should at least read the first few pages of each but from its so heavy and full of info. I think these papers help even more for other certs but they feel like too much for the CCP. What little I read did help me some on of the test but do not let this overwhelm you. You can still pass if you run out of time to focus on these but you need to make sure you have a solid general knowledge of AWS which by this point you should. Test Day {#testday} -------- So if you make study cards or something look over them while you eat. By the time you get in the car you should be practicing whatever calms you down. I was sleepy from being at work until 4:45am so I just played hype music to give my brain a shock. When you get in the test if you're like me you have to brain dump so take the time after you start the timer to just write any and everything you need to get off your mind. The final tip I have is for devs...this is not a dev test. **DO NOT** think like a dev. Think like a business person and if at any point you want to think like a dev you need to flag the question and come back at the end. **My last day-of tip: Once you pass**\ \  ------------------------------------------------------------------------ P.S. you can now [take the test from home with a webcam](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/now-you-can-take-the-aws-certified-cloud-practitioner-exam-at-your-home-or-office-24-7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app) 🙄 but I don't recommend unless the times at a test center just don\'t work for you at all.\ \ \*This advice is up to user discretion. I didn't follow this and in fact didn't even finish half the study material so grain of salt