I had the scariest examination experience

My laptop gave up on me.

I recently sat for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate certificate examination.

It was the scariest online examination experience I have ever had.

This is the same exam that made me contemplate whether or not to give up my writing on Medium in this article.

Unlike the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification exam which I took prior to it, the Solutions Architect exam is much harder and requires more cognitive activity to pass.

I started preparing actively for the exam a week before my scheduled date, 13th February.

As the day for the exam approached I spent more time studying, but I also made sure to write an article to publish on Medium everyday.

Regarding the exam, there were two ways I could take it. The first option was in-person at a test center in my city, and the second option was online with a proctor (Pearson VUE).

I opted to take it online. . .again.

From my research, I found that a lot of people preferred the in-person mode to the online mode for the guarantee of a stable network and power during the exam.

Fortunately for me, I had a reliable system at home that helped me sit and pass the Cloud Practitioner exam.

I trusted this same setup would do just great for my next exam.

The day of the exam

I tested my system which was just my laptop with an ethernet connection. It passed the requirements stipulated by the Pearson VUE software.

My 130-minute long exam started at 11:00 am.

As a time conscious person I kept checking the countdown every now and then to make sure I was not wasting so much time on certain questions.

My strategy was to answer the relatively easier questions first. If I came across a pretty long question that I could not select the answer confidently after reading two times, I would just flag it and move on.

I realized it was an effectual method because there was a decent number of “soft” questions toward the end. Had I spent more time on the thought-provoking ones in the middle, I would have missed out on the easy ones.

With only 20 minutes left, I had about 13 questions to go including the soft questions I talked about.

This was when it happened.

My laptop displayed a prompt saying this:

Your battery is running low.

You may want to plug in your PC.

My heart started racing immediately I saw this message.

I had mixed feelings about it after some seconds passed as it was quite surprising to me that my system with a pretty good battery was almost out of power after barely an hour of test taking.

My webcam was on the entire time so I figured that was the reason for the quick drainage.

My charging cable was right on the floor beside my table but I knew the rules. I could not just pick it up without the permission of my proctor.

I quickly requested to chat with my proctor and indicated what the issue was.

At this point, I just couldn’t answer the question on display. My eyes were gazing away from the question to either the countdown or the chat section to see if my proctor had replied.

Right when my proctor replied, I was greeted by a quite tensed looking face on a pitch black screen.

It was my reflection!

My laptop battery had died and my immediate reaction. . .

How could this happen?! So many thoughts flew through my head including the thought that I may have to retake the test.

Honestly, that was that last thing I wanted to think about but it found its way into my head somehow.

I quickly plugged in my laptop charger and in about 5 seconds it was up and running again with everything as it was.

That was really fast, I know. Thank God for solid-state drives.

What cooled my heart off was that I got to continue from where I reached. I’ll admit that I was still a tad bit jittery because I thought my ability to answer the rest of the questions would be affected by the incident.

But I calmed myself down, made some positive declarations, and reassured myself that I’d sail through successfully.

I finished the exam on time and some hours later, I got an email informing me that I passed successfully.

The feeling of relief was so surreal. I was so grateful. In fact, I still am.

So one moral lesson here among others is to always plug in your charger when taking online tests with a proctor, and to not trust your devices 100%.

Besides, as Werner Vogels says “Everything fails, all the time”

Thank you so much for reading to the end.

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