5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Using AWS as a Student
A beginner-friendly guide to learning AWS as a student, covering costs, budgets, core services, and why building small projects is one of the best ways to learn.
5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Using AWS as a Student
Starting with AWS can feel overwhelming, especially when you are a student and still learning how cloud services work.
There are hundreds of services, different pricing models, and a lot of new terminology to understand. After spending some time learning AWS, these are five things I think every student should know before getting started.
1. The Free Tier Does Not Mean Everything Is Free
One of the first things I learned is that the AWS Free Tier only applies to certain services and usage limits.
It is still possible to create resources that cost money, even when you are using an account mainly for learning.
Before creating a resource, I now try to check the pricing page and understand whether it is included in the Free Tier.
This is especially important for services such as EC2, RDS, storage, and networking.
2. Set Up AWS Budgets Immediately
AWS Budgets is one of the first things I would recommend setting up.
You can create a monthly budget and receive an alert when your estimated spending reaches a certain amount.
For example, a student could create a £5 budget and receive notifications before their spending becomes unexpectedly high.
It only takes a few minutes to configure and gives you some extra peace of mind while experimenting.
3. Remember to Delete Resources After Practising
When you finish a tutorial, stopping the application is not always enough.
Some AWS resources can continue to generate costs until they are completely deleted.
After completing a lab, I normally check services such as:
- EC2 instances
- Elastic IP addresses
- RDS databases
- Load balancers
- EBS volumes
- S3 buckets
It is a good habit to check your AWS account after finishing a project and make sure there is nothing running that you no longer need.
4. Learn One Service at a Time
AWS has a huge number of services, so trying to understand everything at once is probably not the best approach.
I think students should start with a few core services.
A good starting point could be:
- Amazon EC2 for virtual machines
- Amazon S3 for object storage
- AWS Lambda for serverless applications
- Amazon RDS for managed databases
- AWS IAM for permissions and security
Once those concepts make sense, it becomes much easier to understand how other AWS services fit together.
5. Build Small Projects Instead of Only Watching Tutorials
Tutorials and courses are useful, but I have found that actually building something makes the concepts much easier to remember.
Even a very small project can help.
For example, you could:
- Host a static website using Amazon S3
- Create a simple API with AWS Lambda
- Deploy a small application on EC2
- Store application files in S3
- Build a basic serverless project
When something breaks, trying to fix it teaches you much more than simply watching someone else build the project.
Final Thoughts
AWS can look complicated at first, but you do not need to understand every service before you start building things.
For students, I think the best approach is to start small, keep an eye on costs, and experiment with real projects.
AWS Skill Builder and student programmes also make it easier to learn without having to figure everything out completely on your own.
Most importantly, do not be afraid to create things, break them, delete them, and try again. That is usually where the real learning happens.
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