DSC FUTMINNA: A SMALL PLACE WITH BIG POTENTIALS TO IMPACT
A testimony/feedback shared by one of our community member about the just concluded boot-camp CHANBANG ELIZABETH MODUPEOLUWA a 400 Level student of ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING.

MY EXPERIENCE:
Community Building is about learning; not afraid to share, not afraid to ask and not afraid to grow. The end goal is for everyone to learn and no-one is left behind.
Summary of our first session led by the co-lead of the DSC in my school. I have been a member of the community for a while ( I would like to describe myself as a sleeping member because I have not been fully involved in the group’s activities since the beginning of the session). This time, it felt right to participate fully. No more procrastination. It was tagged a boot camp except we would not be living in the camp.

Training started on Monday, the 21st of October 2019. We were briefed on the benefit of belonging to a tech community; a new horizon hit me about doing more than just observing. I have always been a technology enthusiast, for I believe it is “the future”. We were introduced to GitHub, the facilitator called it version control software, and the key benefits listed were endless and interesting but one needed to create an account to enjoy the benefits; which I’m yet to register because I didn’t fully grasp the intricacies. Another facilitator encouraged us to send a pull request to the community DSC to join their team contributing our own little quota in solving world problem using technology.

Furthermore, we were separated into different classes depending on our distinct interests after the necessary preliminary brief, I chose web development because I have a vision to run and manage my own site in the nearest future. The training for web development began fully, taken by a facilitator full of energy and admittedly knew his onions. He explained the basics of the course which he believes each and every one of us ought to have knowledge about; from the history of Web, the internet and web development and many more. He posed a question to everyone on the type of developer we want to be and the reasons we want it, many of us lacked knowledge of, so we were asked to research on it.
The next day, training commenced properly. During the course of the class, I got lost because I was too slow to catch up with the pace of the instructor. My codes were full of errors and it wasn’t refreshing, I couldn’t recall some basics but I was brought to speed by another facilitator who stepped in seeing I was lagging behind but was still not satisfied because I needed to follow fully. I was encouraged somewhat by a statement made by a facilitator taking a different course “if you are not making mistakes then you are not programming”. So, mistakes are allowed, just deal with it. At that point in time, I needed to hear those words, I stood up asked around and was fully involved in the class after that. There were many people who were following the instructor, I just needed to follow, ask questions and try.
Then, I had a good friend who got almost everything that day. We had to wait extra hours after the session to practice till I got it, it felt good.
It continued till the next day, and days after till Friday. I realized that commitment is everything, as long as you are willing to try. So, make the mistakes and figure it out over again. My joy was cut short when it was announced that the Boot camp was coming to an abrupt end going against the initial two weeks planned for, due to some reasons beyond their control.
Though it was short lived but the experience would live with me. For now, I am interested in back-end development for the idea intrigues me. It could be seen as the data bank/power house of a website and it’s done behind the scene ( I like to make things happen behind the scene).
In conclusion, DSC taught me that you don’t necessarily need to have everything, you can have everything and still not know its importance, but it is how you make use of what you have now that matters. It was a small place but the potentials are bigger than the environment.
DSC FutMinna rocks!
LinkedIn: Elizabeth Chanbang
Thanks to the entire staff of Centre for open distance and e-learning (Codel) for giving us their facilities. we appreciate them for their unwavering support during the bootcamp session.
If you find this impactful you can clap 100x.
Follow us on twitter @dscfutminna
