Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve - Napoleon Hill.
2021 was the year I pushed myself beyond limits and realized just how true that statement is - at least for me.
At the beginning of the year, I didn’t realize how much my life was about to change and how the trajectory of my life was about to pivot.
I was a confused social media manager, struggling with the fact that I didn’t graduate from school and tons of other issues. I was angry, frustrated at some point and was diagnosed with anxiety.
When I reached out to Praise, December 2020, and subscribed for my first ever developer course on Codecademy, I still did not believe in myself or my abilities.
2021 was tough. It was tough on me as a person, tough financially and mentally. I am therefore super elated that I have wins to share because some days were very bleak and I was only being forced to study/learn because I did not want sapa to have victory over me.
The Good?
- I graduated. After a 1 year break due to Covid-19, I resumed school this year and graduated with a better grade than I imagined.
- I got accepted into the She Code Africa mentorship program, Data Science/Machine learning track - where I met Steven Kolawole, who has been the biggest impact on my career.
- I got accepted into the She Code Africa Cloud School Program and graduated as a Site Reliability Engineer.
- I totally pivoted to tech, leaving my last social media managing role sometime in August.
- I became a domain lead with She Code Africa, Data science/machine learning track.
- I got my first full-time tech job as a technical writer, and with a foreign company.
- I was headhunted by an ed-tech company and will be publishing my first course with them.
- Signed a couple of international contracts. 🎉
- Got accepted as a guest author for various blogs - I have Mac and LordGhost to thank for this.
- I made a lot of new friends, thanks to various internships, developer groups and programs I attended.
- Ending the year earning about 15 times what I started the year with
The Bad?
- Anxiety dealt with me. There were days it was almost crippling and I would be in my apartment almost losing my mind about the most simple thing.
- I dropped out of a couple of programs/internships I got into - some of them I was too busy, others I just did not have the mental capacity to take them on.
- Applied to Outreachy twice and was rejected both times.😭😭😭
- Hit some crazy lows financially before things started getting better - thankfully.
- My mental health dipped several times during the year, fought to stay sane.
My Takeaways?
- Learning with a community gives you more speed than you can imagine. Being a part of SCA changed my life, I learnt so fast because I leveraged on community programs.
- You can’t do life without friends. You will get tired, frustrated and everything in between but with friends who watch out for and continually push you, you will make progress.
- Setting goals and working towards them will never be old fashioned. With grit, the right network and God, nothing is impossible.
- God is always faithful - in the darkest hours, in the brightest moments, He is always true to His Word.
Coming from a background in Linguistics and no prior experience in sciences, I am beyond proud of myself. I am pivoting to another part of tech in the new year and I am so excited about the adventures to come.
Cheers to 2022; our best year yet! 🥂