Three Months at TIIDELab.concat(My Experience 3.0).
“The Journey will not be easy but it would pay off at last” By Aderoju Shamsudeen.
“The Journey of purpose is summarized in getting the best version of oneself, we all came to this world with our worst version and it is our responsibility to pass through a process of refinement to get the very best version of ourselves” By Arimoro Olamilekan Ezekiel.
Flashing back to about 4 years ago when I was about 14 years of age, I was always telling my friends about how I love programmers and the amazing stuffs they can build with their skills but a lot of them saw me as too ambitious not knowing that this will be achieved someday, I have always loved being with a laptop and creating amazing apps, games and websites but I never knew the approach to follow and who to meet…
Fast-forward to 2020, the year I will call “my year of setting the path right”. After getting a good laptop December 2019, I got a strong conviction and energy to start what I would love doing. I told few people about it and they encouraged to go for it, I started by making research about the industry, what I need to learn and how to get materials to learn it. I kick started fully around last week in march 2020, by starting out to learn HTML5. I started learning myself and I thought of joining a community in order to meet people better than me and eventually learn from them.
The journey of self taught was actually very hard because I had to buy data myself and get power supply by all means to learn daily. Fortunately for me around July my brother saw the WhatsApp status of a friend about the biggest opportunity that can ever happen to a man which is “TIIDELab”. He sent it to me and I applied for the program which would run for about 5 months.
After passing through all the stages of selection I finally became a part of this great opportunity called “TIIDELab”. But sincerely the journey from the start up till now has not been easy and it has been really demanding because remember the purpose of the journey is to get the very best version of yourself and this will take a great sacrifice.
It has been three months now and to be sincere it has been God’s grace and that has kept me because there were times I felt like quitting due to some challenges financially and health wise. Two words has been my driving force and it has been what has kept me even at the hard times and they are “Endurance and commitment”. Endurance makes me see the journey as something I am to pass through and commitment makes me give out my best and enjoy the process.
Since when I joined TIIDELab, I have really learnt a lot starting from Data Structures, Git and GitHub, HTML & CSS, JavaScript and now moving to learn React.js . One thing I thank TIIDELab for was that for about one month ago have been applying to different jobs because I believe I have something to offer in terms of value. I applied to a company called Bincom Dev Center and I got a reply to take a test, I was happy getting a reply because it showed me that my Resume and Portfolio were nice and this is the work of TIIDELab because we submit our Resume and Portfolio website for review. I wrote the test and I passed it because it was not a new thing to us at TIIDELab. I got another mail notifying me that I have passed to the next level of the interview but I declined the offer because it was a PHP role and I am a JavaScript Developer so I did not do the interview. All these made me know that TIIDELab is really training us to be employable and self reliant.
I believe there are more opportunities that are coming my way because this is just an eye opener to what TIIDELab want me to see, and I really appreciate all the instructors that has taught me so far because I have been taught what is applicable to real world projects.
Another thing I love is the project we are doing currently which is called “Naija Yellow Catalogue”, I will call it an advantage to my work experience because it is a real world project that has made me to have the feel of a fully functional full stack project and it will also add to my portfolio as a junior developer because I don’t have any previous work experience but my future employer would be glad to see a hands on experience with this kind of project. And this appreciation goes to all my team mate that has made this project a success so far and I believe it will be a successful one at the end.
At TIIDELab there is a day I call our Christmas day which is on Friday because it is a day to meet with my colleagues and to learn soft skills that will me a good developer and a problem solver, So far the soft skills class by Mr. Shamsudeen Aderoju has really helped me the way I see problems and how to tackle it with concrete steps and it has been yielding brilliant result. I will say a Big Thank you to him for the level of research he makes to put this up and the accuracy in delivery, He really deserves the Big Thank you.
I still look forward to learning a lot from TIIDELab before this cohort ends in terms of Tech skills and Soft skills, One thing I will ask myself at the end is “Was it really worth it?” and I know my answer would definitely be “Yes”.
These three months journey would not have been interesting if not for the management of TIIDELab, they have gone extra mile to see us become self reliant and a good product at the end of the program. They have paid sacrifices that I can’t start mentioning all, it is very rare to see a fellowship that would give you a full month data subscription so that you can meet up for all classes and also learn with it, the financial support from TIIDELab as also been encouraging. I know that these few lines of word cannot express or describe what TIIDELab has done so far, but what I will say is a very Big Thank You to our competent Program Coordinator (Mr. Aderoju Shamsudeen), Mr. Pishikeni Tukura, the Founder (Mr. Kadir Salami), the sponsors of this great program (ITF, NECA) and the TIIDELab team… Thanks so much!
Thanks for reading through the third edition of my Journey and interesting experience at TIIDELab, watch out for my fourth edition. Thanks!
