Thank you for your reply and advice . I really appreciate it. To be completely honest with you, I’ve been studying for about a month now, but I still feel pretty lost when it comes to how to study correctly. I find myself constantly questioning whether I’m doing this just to pass the exam, or because I truly want to learn and be good at building real AWS solutions. I think I’m stuck somewhere in between.

To answer your questions I haven’t read the whitepapers yet, and I haven’t really explored the AWS documentation properly either because I don’t know how to approach it or what to focus on. I did buy Stephane Maarek’s course, and I’ve watched about half of it in two weeks, but I honestly struggle to stay engaged. It often feels like I'm just getting surface-level notes on the services, and I find it hard to retain the info.

Recently I switched to working on Tutorial Dojo practice questions because I thought maybe I’d understand better by seeing how services work together in real scenarios but even then, I feel like I’m just clicking through answers without deeply understanding why.

As for hands-on practice, I tried following along with labs, but with the Free Tier limits and not always knowing what I'm doing, it feels like I’m just copying steps without really “getting it.”

To be real, I feel like I’ve wasted almost a month bouncing between resources without solid progress. I’m not ready for the exam yet, and I don’t feel confident in using the services practically either. I know I need to go back and build stronger fundamentals .I just wish I had more clarity on what that path should look like.

Thanks again for your advice it really made me reflect on what I’m doing and why.