When I started studying for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam (SAA-C03), I thought it would be straightforward. I already worked in IT. I had touched cloud concepts before. I figured it would mostly be connecting dots and memorizing a few services.

I was wrong.

The exam is broad in a way that sneaks up on you. AWS isn’t just “learn EC2 and S3.” It’s learning how dozens of services interact under different constraints: cost, scalability, fault tolerance, security, operational overhead, and performance. The hard part isn’t memorizing definitions. It’s thinking like an architect under pressure.