Thank you for the overwhelming support
I recently posted that I took and failed the AWS Data Engineer Associate Certification test on May 9th. I also posted about my experience on Linked In.
The post was not the typical certificate of achievement. I failed the test. But the support that I received from the Linked In community was overwhelming, thank you.
Thank you all of your support!
A good number of you reminded me that failure is only a failure if you quit, otherwise it is feedback. This is great advice and I have taken it to heart. I have scheduled a re-take of the certification test on June 20th.
Many gave me words of encouragement. Wishing me luck on my next attempt. I appreciate that and I have continued studying to make those good wishes into a reality. One area that I have concentrated on is hands on learning with labs. Previously, I had focused primarily on learning theory. Theory is important, but I find that getting hands on experience with something really helps to anchor the theory and help me to remember it.
I was surprised to hear from many of you that I am not the only one to have failed the test the first time taking it. Clearly I found the test to be more difficult than I expected, and it sounds like I am not the only one. For those of you with this experience, I am happy to know that your first attempt was not your final attempt.
There were some of you who appreciated my transparency and posting about my setbacks and not must my success. I appreciate this feedback, thank you for it. It is a good reminder that everyone has setbacks and most of the time we only see the success. Success should be celebrated, but it is not the full picture.
I am humbled and grateful for each and every one of your responses and you have my gratitude. Your support helps to keep me pushing forward.
One way that I’ve been pushing forward is by learning about Agentic AI and I thought that using an LLM to categorize and summarize the comments would be an interesting exercise. It did not disappoint.
You can find the code on my github if you are interested in the details. Using Python, I parsed out the comments and asked Gemini to group them into categories and summarize the comments into those categories.
Categories
Here are the categories resulted from the analysis:
Category 1: Encouragement & Support: Comments expressing general encouragement, well wishes, and belief in the poster’s ability to succeed in future attempts. Includes simple affirmations like “You got this!” and expressions of solidarity.
Category 2: Sharing Similar Experiences/Relatability: Comments sharing personal experiences with failing exams or similar setbacks. These comments aim to provide comfort and demonstrate that the poster’s experience is common and surmountable.
Category 3: Advice & Tips: Comments offering specific advice, study tips, or resources to help the poster succeed on future attempts.
Category 4: Perspective & Re-framing: Comments that offer a different perspective on failure, emphasize the value of the learning process, or point out the limitations/value of certifications in general. These comments aim to reframe the failure as a positive experience.
Category 5: Appreciation for Honesty/Vulnerability: Comments directly praising the poster for sharing their failure and acknowledging the vulnerability/courage it takes to do so.
Results
There were 70 comments in total, which is far more interaction that I have gotten before on a Linked In post. This excluded any responses thatI wrote.
- Category 1: Encouragement & Support - 31
- Category 2: Sharing Similar Experiences/Relatability - 15
- Category 3: Advice & Tips - 3
- Category 4: Perspective & Re-framing - 18
- Category 5: Appreciation for Honesty/Vulnerability - 3
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash