Introduction
Hi, my name is Okereke Victor. I am from Imo State, but I was born and raised in Lagos State, Nigeria. My journey into tech, I would say, is quite different from most stories out there because unlike most in the field I wasn't always interested intechnology. At least not cyber tech. And unlike most, I don't have a natural talent for it. I found cyber tech boring infact. But as time went on, I got more interested in it, and more fascinated by it, and this was mostly due to the kind of movies I watched during my teens (I watch a lot of Hollywood movies). I was, and still am, so interested in AI– It's almost an obsession.
Money also played a major part in my transition into tech. Note that for the purpose of this article, anytime I say tech, I'm referring to cyber technology specifically. So let's get into it...
** During and after my SSCE**
Before diving into how I made the transition into tech, let me touch on my education. I am a secondary school certificate holder, I finished secondary school in 2018 from Mavir Leaders College, Olodi Apapa Lagos. As I said before, I wasn't always interested in tech. During my school days, I wanted to be a marine engineer. I like the sea so I thought that working on the sea and also building ships(which I also like) would be the dream job. But it wasn't meant to be. I didn't get good enough grades for the course, some financial issues in my family, the selling of the place we were staying in and having to move to another house made for a very tough few years for me. During this period, I did some small jobs working in factories. COVID-19
happened soon after and everyone was on lockdown, I stayed at home all through. It was during this time that my interest in tech grew to the point where I decided I wanted to build a career in it. After some time, things settled down a bit, by this time, we had a new place and my parents and I started thinking about school again. I started going to computer classes at Data point Institute where I learnt desktop and graphics with Microsoft Word, Corel draw and Photoshop. I wasn't satisfied with this though because what I really wanted to learn was coding, programming. The training lasted six to eight months, I couldn't get a laptop during the period, so I did the entire training period without a laptop. I graduated with a proficiency certificate and that ship sailed. After that, two or three months later, I got an opportunity to sit for JAMB. It was quite a tough one because i finished secondary school three years before and hadn't done much active studying since then. With help from my primary school teacher and his very kind friends from church, I wrote JAMB in 2021. They paid my exam fees and even gave me free classes leading up to the exams. I wrote the exam, I got 218 and after some months, I applied for a scholarship to study computer science at Novelty Polytechnic, Ibadan. I got the scholarship but I withdrew because I found the fee too expensive. Even though it still wouldn't have really worked out due
to the strike. I started working at a factory again, and after some months, my cousin introduced me to brigherdays codelab–a tech community that focuses on cultivating software developers. They had a scholarship going on at the time. At first, when she told me about it, I just said no. I wasn't interested in it. But my parents persuaded me to try it out. They were so convinced that I would make the selection, I just participated because they wanted me to and didn't take it seriously. I applied for the scholarship, after the scholarship interview, I resumed work the next day like I wasn't even expecting to get the scholarship. But to my surprise , I got the scholarship, and that's how it all started.
** The Transition**
A few weeks after getting the scholarship, classes started. I quit my job some days before and started the classes with codelab. I was excited because finally I got to learn coding from scratch, I've wanted this to happen for a long time, this was my first coding experience, it was finally happening. At first everything was very new and strange and difficult to understand, but I backed myself to bounce back and meet up. I started without a laptop and continued that way for the first three to four weeks, so I found it difficult, especially doing homework. At that moment, I was borrowing my cousin's laptop.
My mom had consulted my primary school teacher to help get me a
laptop, phone and flashdrive which she paid for, and after some weeks it was ready. I got the laptop and things were relatively easier from then onwards. Note that I said 'relatively', because there was zero power supply where I stay: we did not pay the electricity bills and were disconnected since 2021 till date. As a result I couldn't practice as I wanted with my laptop, but after charging it during class, I used it for homework only and practiced with my phone and on paper. At codelab, I did subjects like Design Thinking, Project Management, UI/UX, JavaScript and HTML/CSS. I wasn't particularly good or a natural at any specific subject, I tried to be equally good at everything. I did designs in UI/UX and wrote my first codes: some good, some terrible. It started with the terrible ones but I got better and improved more. For the UI/UX designs, we used Figma. We designed webpages for both desktop and mobile devices, we also wireframed and prototyped. My UI/UX designs were not too bad. Most of what we did was just replicating already existing designs as best we can.
We were given lots of homework everyday and were asked to post our homework online, especially on Facebook. My first project within a team didn't go too bad, but we could have done better, you know, that sort of thing. We were only just getting started with the learning process, but we improved well and did much better in the second team project which marked the end of the first phase in the training programme. The project involved just making a website and linking it's webpages. We applied Scrum methodology in project management due to the short time for the project; we did brainstorming, prototyping, site map,etc in design thinking; we did the UI/UX design for the website and also added some JavaScript. It was basically a rerun of everything we had done up until that point. We were split into different teams. We could pick any existing website and use it as a template. Like the members of my team and other teams, I did well. I was even individually recognized for compiling the codes for my team. In JavaScript we covered basics and some important concepts as a foundation as l we will now be moving on to Typescript.The first phase is over now, in the second phase, I am doing relatively better than the first. So far, I've learnt some things after I made this transition into tech. The things I learnt from my journey so far:
⦁ Always be ready to learn, unlearn and relearn. Keep an open mind.
⦁ Have necessary friends. Friends in your career path that you can ask questions and share ideas with.
⦁ Keep practising even without someone supervising your work, just keep practising.
Currently I am still studying at codelab. I'm already into my second month. Thank you for reading this article. Give a clap 👏 and also don't forget to share.
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