Long time no speak!

In early December, as I wrapped up the first semester of my senior year, I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do with my break. Sure, I’d definitely be looking for jobs, but that wouldn’t take up all my time—right? Indeed, it wouldn’t, and so I looked for something else to do.

After speaking with my old boss from my summer 2024 internship, ZB Mastylo, and doing some research on the technologies that employers are using, I decided that I would do something with Amazon Web Services.

Motivation & Planning

This decision came down to two key factors. The first was that AWS is the largest CSP, owning ~30% of cloud infrastructure as of January 2026. This meant that I would be casting the widest net by learning to use their services. The second was that a vast majority of the employers for whom I am interested in working use AWS. So, not only was the net that I was casting wide, but it was tailored to my (hopeful) future. I also thought that AWS would provide some useful infrastructure to projects that I have been working on (especially with the free credits they provide).

The next step was figuring out how I wanted to approach studying. Two potential paths that I came up with included learning specific AWS services that I thought may be applicable and AWS infrastructure & services at a high level before diving into specific ones. After researching for a few days, I ultimately decided to go with the latter because the Certified Cloud Practitioner course did just this, and seemed doable within the 4-week break from school.

Course Time ‼️

Soon after, I finished my exams and got home from break. That night, I had planned to play COD Zombies with a friend of mine (one of my favorite pastimes). Unfortunately, my buddy bailed, so I decided to start studying for the CCP there and then.

To study, I followed Stephane Maarek’s AWS CCP Udemy course, which I bought for roughly $20. In addition to the course, I engaged directly with AWS services through the Console, CLI, or SDK, as I felt that doing this would help reinforce my understanding of each service.

The next few weeks were characterized by (mostly) consistent studying of a few hours per day. At the beginning, I was able to go through course modules and explore the services relatively quickly. But, as the course continued, I found that my progress slowed due to necessary review of previous content.

Wait, this exam is proctored??

Finally, I felt confident enough to take the exam and scheduled it for the very last day of break (January 13th). During this process, I found out that the online exam was proctored and also cost $100 🥀. I paid the price and anxiously awaited exam day.

Luckily, the process went off without a hitch and I found a way to pass. I called my Mom and she told me she had no idea what I was talking about and questioned why I spent my break studying. Thanks Mom.

Gonna miss this

I’m not actually going to miss this. That being said, I found the content of the exam to be fascinating and comprehensive. I knew that AWS was huge and offered a ton of services, but to see how configurable each service was and the different problems that they solve was very interesting.

I was also very pleased with Stephane’s course that covers the exam material. I thought that it was comprehensive enough to be an easy follow but also seems to be constantly updated to accommodate changes to the tested content. I will say, however, that the time I spent playing around with the AWS services was just as important as the course to support my understanding of the services. Anyone can follow the course and pass the exam, but it is what you do with the knowledge obtained from the certifcation that really matters.

Where to go from here?

That brings me to my final point: what do I plan to do with this and where will I go from here?

Though I guess I am a certified cloud practitioner now, I still have a ton to learn about the services that the exam covered. I plan to continue working with them on personal projects to reinforce my understanding.

I also plan to begin studying for my Solutions Architect exam in the very near future. I have heard this exam takes longer to study for (which is why I opted for the CCP given my month-long window over break), but the content should be slightly more familiar now that I have the Cloud Practitioner under my belt.

I’d like to think that taking and passing the Certified Cloud Practitioner exam gives a framework for individuals to think about relevant AWS services that can be used to solve cloud computing problems. However, there is still much for me to learn when it comes to implementing solutions to those problems. I’ll post here when I have more updates in the future with relevant work, whether it be AWS or other projects.

Hi everyone!

After several years, I have finally decided to purchase my own domain and deploy the first iteration of my personal portfolio site to it. I have been sitting on this source code since the beginning of the summer, but for some reason never published it to the Internet. But, here it is.

Purpose

Last summer, I had a conversation with my bosses of about the importance of journaling professional progress early on in one’s career. We discussed the three hypothetical (though I guess not so hypothetical in practice) ranks of apprentice, journeyman, and master. In general, apprentices have less proof of competency (at least through professional work), so it follows that they should maintain a log of what they have learned. Given that I am still a college student, it seems appropriate that I fall in this category and should therefore follow my bosses’ advice.

Website

With the purpose out of the way, I would like to welcome you to my personal website. Whether you are a friend, peer, employer (please be an employer, I need a job), or just browsing, I hope you can find something cool or useful here. I wrote this website in Astro, a JS web framework that specializes in shipping lightweight HTML to the browser to improve performance.

On this site, you can find some of the projects that I am working on, some information about me, a way for us to get in contact, and this blog. Let me know if you have any suggestions about additional content that would be interesting to see, any styling advice, or any errors I made that need to be corrected.

End of summer 2025 internship

This summer, I spent my time working at Shepherd Financial Partners, a wealth management firm that specializes in combining asset management with financial planning to help clients achieve both short and long-term goals. I worked with many people on many projects during my time at SFP this summer, but some highlights include a full-stack application that searches for and summarizes market news for clients and improvements made to the company website. This past summer was super fun, as I met some really great people and learned a lot about both finance and computer science. There are certainly a lot of thank you’s to be made, in particular to Mark Shepherd for giving me the opportunity to work for his firm and Chris Cogliano for teaching me a ton about finance and working with me to implement the web app that I mentioned.

The rest of summer

With the internship behind me, I am looking forward to working on some really intriguing projects in the weeks before school starts back up. I also have some fun stuff planned for the upcoming semester, including working as a tech lead for a JumboCode group and some other work that is in the early stages right now 😉. When I have some more stuff to mention, I’ll update you here.