The World Is Your Oyster

Florence Mnyazi
Jul 24, 2017 · 4 min read

I like telling people the above statement because I tend to apply it in my own life; …plus I love poetry and wouldn’t want to miss a moment to give a quote. So what does it mean for the world to be your oyster….well it simply means that you make the most of any situation, by prying it open and taking a dive inside (sea food lovers anyone?). You see, its a bit of work opening up an oyster; you have to put some work into it…you break the shell and what comes out..oyster(if you’re a foodie) or sometimes when you’re lucky…a shell. But you don’t get whatever is inside until you do the work of breaking it open and reaching in……..and you will realize that such is life!

May the world be your oyster!

We did all of the week one session at home and this worked on our favor in one way and against it it another. You see, living in a full-house with extended relatives and some who keep on visiting brings with it one aspect of African culture; hosting. I could not get away with locking myself in my room claiming to “code”; which many people find hard to understand and not offer to help out with my chores. Having this activities to do at home and my Andela tasks for the day to be delivered taught me a great deal of time management and prioritization. Even with having to go no-where during the day I had to wake up early and sleep late; to not only fit my chores during the day and get time to do my #YOYO tasks.

Change as per the requirements of your environment.

With the saved time from no commute and having to hustle for matatus (those from our route are ridiculously crazy). Having to learn and unlearn some new concepts of my project and engaging with my lfa online for help was also quite challenging as I’m more used to face-face engagements especially when dealing with issues. My team-mates were however willing to be more than helpful, helping me by reading through and debugging my code. With these on-line engagements as opposed to face to face ones, I learned to be very specific when asking something new that was code related to be able to get the right and timely answer.

Change!

Week 2 Day I the on-site session of the boot camp. I admit, I am feeling pretty happy with myself for making it this far. Having not made it to week two before, I didn’t know quite what to expect but kept an open mind. I anticipated and was somehow looking forward to learning and engaging with new members of my team (not like the others were bad). It has been a journey marked with growth, with me discovering endurance points I didn’t know I had.

We start the day with warm-ups which help us loosen up and get acquainted with our fellow bootcampers and other Andelans. Most of us had interacted right before the session and mostly over gitter during the off-site week so we were a bit familiar with names.

Thirty minutes later after warm-ups, we had the on-boarding session where we were taken through the expectations of the on-site week of boot-camp. Ian, one of the LFAs gave us his own experience of boot-camp, in what turned out to be a very inspiring but unplanned for speech. One thing which resonated with me that I could totally relate to was that when you’re under pressure, one tends to overlook many of their strengths but concentrate and even over magnify their weakness. I have been victim of this during the past week and hope to not be as hard on myself as I was last week even as I work to raising the bar and provide quality outputs in relation to my task.

Sadly, I had to say good-bye to my team-mates from last week(but not really good-bye since they still are very much around for me to nag with my code-related questions (heaven bless their gracious and accommodating hearts).I however make two new friends, my week two team-mates Steve and Chrispus who I’m glad to say we were able to kick-it off. I also happen to have a new facilitator who has challenged all of us to learn from every bit of the process and to seek out help from among ourselves first before approaching others…key point enforced; Collaboration.

I can’t wait for tomorrow to see what it will bring as I continue with this journey of #YOYO

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