In 7th grade I had a science teacher named Mr. Beyer.

He was basically Bill Nye in a polo shirt. Loud, animated, always ready to blow something up in the name of learning. But the thing that actually stuck with me was not the demos. It was how obsessed he was with the “why” behind everything.

We had a state curriculum. We had vocab lists. We had benchmarks. But Mr. Beyer never really cared if we could spit back the “right answer” on command. He cared whether we could explain why something worked, and how we would figure it out again if we forgot.

He was not just teaching science. He was teaching us how to learn.

Years later I ended up teaching 7th grade science myself, basically trying to be a discount version of him. Same mindset: focus less on what to learn and more on how to learn it.

Fast forward again. Now I am in IT and web development, trying to stack certifications. And surprise, the adult world is not much different from middle school.

Nobody likes being firehosed with information and told to regurgitate it on test day. Not kids. Not grown professionals.

So here is the point of this post:

Instead of brute forcing a certification, use AI to build your own digital Mr. Beyer that coaches you through the material one day at a time.

I used this exact approach for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam. Below I will show you:

1. how to set the stage so your AI behaves like a real instructor
2. prompts you can paste in to build a full study plan
3. daily routines for lessons, homework, and quizzes
4. AWS specific examples and a mini practice set at the end

You can swap AWS out for any other certification, but I will stay concrete with AWS so this does not feel theoretical.

Step 1: Tell AI Who It Is (And Who You Are)

Most people open ChatGPT and type questions like they are using a search engine. That is fine for quick answers. It is not great for learning something big like AWS.

For this to work, you want a persistent teacher, not a glorified search bar. So first, give it a role and some rules.

Here is a starter prompt you can paste into a fresh chat:

Prompt 1: define your “teacher”

You are my personal AWS instructor, modeled after a great 7th grade science teacher who focuses on the “why” more than the “what.”

Your job is to help me pass the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam.

How I want you to teach:

• start with a plain language explanation, then go deeper
• always explain WHY AWS works that way, not just which button to click
• use lots of small real world examples (startups, web apps, reporting jobs, and so on)
• at the end of each lesson, give:
  • 2 to 3 recommended readings from official AWS docs or free AWS training pages (you can summarize if links are not available)
  • a short homework section with 3 to 5 questions or scenarios
• at the beginning of the next lesson, start by quizzing me on yesterday’s homework before teaching anything new

First, ask me:

1. how many weeks I have until my exam
2. how many days per week and minutes per day I can study

Then design a study plan that covers the full exam blueprint.

That “session zero” prompt tells the model: you are Mr. Beyer now, not Clippy.

Step 2: Make It Build A Real AWS Study Plan

Once it asks how long you have and how often you can study, give it honest numbers.

Then tighten it up with a second prompt so it does not skip the important AWS areas.

Prompt 2: force a full exam plan

Now build a week by week study plan for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam.

Make sure the plan includes at least:

• IAM (users, roles, policies, best practices)
• VPC, subnets, route tables, NAT gateway vs internet gateway
• EC2 instance types, Auto Scaling groups, Load Balancers
• S3 storage classes, lifecycle policies, versioning, encryption
• RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB (and when to use each)
• CloudFront, Route 53 basics (routing policies, health checks)
• monitoring and logging: CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Config
• reliability, high availability, and multi AZ vs multi Region
• cost optimization basics (Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, storage classes, and so on)

For each study day, give:

• the topic
• a short explanation
• 2 to 3 recommended readings or videos (summarize what I should look for)
• 3 to 5 homework questions or scenarios on that topic

After this, instead of “read this giant course and hope for the best,” you end up with something like:

• week 1: IAM and accounts
• week 2: VPC and networking
• week 3: EC2 and load balancing
• week 4: S3 and storage
• week 5: databases
• week 6: edge, DNS, and caching
• week 7: monitoring, security, and cost
• week 8: review and practice exams

The exact breakdown does not matter as long as you cover the AWS exam guide and you are studying at a pace you can actually keep up with.

Step 3: Run Each Day Like A Mini Class

Here is how a normal study session can look.

Start with:

Before we move on, quiz me on what I studied yesterday.

Ask me 5 questions (mix of multiple choice and short answer). Wait for my answer to each one, then tell me if I am right and why.

At the end, list my weak spots and suggest if I should review again before moving on.

If you bomb the warm up, do not be a hero. Stay on that topic another day. Better to fix gaps now than get wrecked on the real exam.

Today’s lesson: explain it to a 7th grader first

Once the quiz is done, move into the scheduled topic:

Teach me today’s topic from the plan.

Start by explaining it like I am a 7th grader using a real world analogy.

Then go deeper and cover:

• the main concepts
• common pitfalls on the AWS exam
• 2 to 3 example scenarios where an architect would use this service

For example, on a VPC day, you could have it explain:

• a VPC is like your own private neighborhood inside AWS
• subnets are different streets
• route tables are the rules that say which street goes to which gate
• an internet gateway is the public highway entrance
• a NAT gateway is like a gated exit for residents only

Then it can layer in CIDR blocks, private vs public subnets, NACLs vs security groups, and so on.

Homework: make it hurt a little

End with something like:

Give me homework for today:

• 3 to 5 scenario based questions on this topic
• mix of “which architecture is best” and “what went wrong” style questions

At the end, summarize what a strong student would be able to explain after this homework.

Write your answers somewhere you will still have tomorrow. Then the next day, tell the bot:

Here are my answers to yesterday’s homework. Grade them, explain any mistakes, and then quiz me again with 3 new questions on my weakest points.

This is where the learning actually sticks. Not when you read. When you try to produce the answer and then get corrected.

Step 4: Use AWS Specific Scenarios So It Feels Real

To make this feel less abstract, here are example prompt patterns you can use that are very AWS flavored.

EC2 and load balancing scenario practice

Give me 4 scenario questions focused on EC2, Auto Scaling, and Load Balancers for the Solutions Architect – Associate exam.

Example styles:

• a web app that crashes under sudden traffic spikes
• a batch processing job that only runs at night
• a startup that wants high availability across two AZs but low cost
• an app that needs to support both HTTP and HTTPS securely

For each scenario, ask me to choose between architectures like:

• single EC2 vs Auto Scaling group
• ALB vs NLB vs no load balancer
• on demand vs Reserved vs Spot

Do not give me the answers yet.

After you answer them, send:

Here are my answers. Grade them like an AWS instructor, explain each correct answer, and tell me what the wrong options would have done instead.

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Step 5: Build A Mini Practice Test At The End

When you are a week or two from the exam, you want to simulate some pressure.

Build me a 20 question mini practice test for the AWS Solutions Architect – Associate exam.

Rules:

• cover IAM, VPC, EC2, S3, RDS or Aurora, DynamoDB, CloudFront, Route 53, monitoring or logging, and cost optimization
• use realistic, scenario based questions like the real exam
• for each question, give 4 options (A, B, C, D) and only one correct answer
• do not show the answers until I have answered all 20

After you finish, tell it:

Now show me the correct answers and detailed explanations for each question.

For every question I got wrong, explain:

• why the correct option is right
• why my choice is wrong
• what pattern or rule I should remember for the real exam

If you repeat this a few times with fresh test sets, your weak areas become very obvious.

Why This Works (And Why Mr. Beyer Would Approve)

This whole setup does one important thing:

It forces you to think instead of copy.

You are not just watching hours of video passively.
You are getting quizzed, corrected, and pushed to explain your reasoning.
You are seeing the same concepts reappear in different scenarios until they click.

That is exactly how Mr. Beyer taught. He did not care if we memorized the definition of “density.” He cared if we could look at two objects, reason it out, and explain what would sink or float and why.

You can do the same thing with AWS, or any certification:

1. define the teacher
2. define the goal
3. make it teach in small daily chunks
4. demand homework, quizzes, and feedback
5. iterate until your wrong answers stop being random guesses and start being rare

AI is not magic. It is just a really fast, really patient version of that one teacher who actually cared about how you learned.

Use it that way, and suddenly “studying for a cert” feels less like cramming facts, and more like sitting in the back of Mr. Beyer’s classroom again, wondering what he is going to blow up next.