What I did to help some people gather some basic experience was to motivate them to run labs on their personal VMs. Practice every detail in your exam outline (if that's the primary route you're looking at) by actually doing stuff. The exam outline seeks to guide you to a well rounded fundermental understanding of SQL Server as a whole. follow that guide, not necesarily to take the exam, but to help you know how to start learning about the whole of SQL server. So, install SQL server yourself (practice the GUI & scripted versions), create tables, run backups, do all High Availability options, etc., follow through on every thing you can, wish for errors so you troubleshoot them and learn, understand how to use "books online" for quick reference, and confront your most challenging topics. You should feel confident (not at expert level) about SQL server after a couple of weeks.