Studying for Microsoft Azure Fundamentals exam AZ-900

Disclaimer: I am not good at studying, and I've been in the industry for a while.  

Preparation for Azure Fundamentals AZ-900 exam

This was my first exam prep in a long time, but I did start off by going through the material in Microsoft Learn for Azure Fundamentals:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/azure-fundamentals/

It seemed reasonably easy enough, but being slightly worried about what to expect, I bought the AZ-900 practice exam questions through Whizlabs, and then after doing one, yeah, I was right to be worried. The test expected a greater level of detail of studying than what I got out of Microsoft Learn.

Back to studying then. I did a few things:

1. Watched a couple of Tim Warner's AZ-900 tutorial videos on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCim7PFtynyPuzMHtbNyYOXA/videos)
2. Decided that I needed a structure to solidify my learning, as everything up to this point seemed to be a mess to some extent, so I went through the Exam AZ-900: MicrosoftAzure Fundamentals–Skills Measured document (https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE3VwUY)
3. Created my own mind map - I think this helped quite a bit in going through topics quickly and identifying the gaps in knowledge. Stuff I didn't know, either I went through the Microsoft Docs site for clarification, or other blog posts, as sometimes I found the examples/explanation given to be more helpful for me.
   
   Download my mind map here: (pdf | png)
   

Went through all 5 Whizlabs practice tests twice, and was more or less satisfied with the results. As the AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals exam questions are quite straightforward, I averaged about 20 minutes per exam.

What to Expect for the Online Proctored Exam

COVID-19 meant that it was an online proctored exam. I spent the previous day going through the setup, only to find that I had to re-do the setup on the day itself - luckily I did allocate 15-20 minutes before the exam.

The exam software runs in full screen, and has access to your microphone and camera. Also you're being recorded during the exam.

Two of the rules I found slightly off-putting -

1. I couldn't put my hand on my face - this was hard as I was having shoulder/neck pain, and wanted to have additional support for my head.
   
2. I couldn't look around either - sometimes I turn my head to the side slightly to think, and got told that I had to keep looking into the screen.
   

Slight differences between the actual exam and the Whizlabs version:

• There were 32 questions instead of 55.
  
• The scoring system is slightly different, but you are required to pass the majority of the questions.
• There were some drag and drop questions as to which fits what description better - maybe that contributed to the 55 questions.
  

I went through the questions and finished in about 25 minutes, seeing that I got careless sometimes in the practice by not reading the questions properly.