Culture of Excellence…Bootcamp Experience (Day 5)

Today is the last day of the first week of the Andela Bootcamp, my experience so far has been wonderful, I’ve not had to work this hard for as long as I can remember and its exciting to have something push me so hard. I’ve had to learn new concepts, systems, language, tools and approaches to Programming and to Life as a whole.

It is always good to see these Bootcampers faces, the journey so far has been tough but everyone is still here and happy. The moment our Instructors came into the Class, we started the soft skills session. Today’s exercise is a game in which everyone had to stand around a circle in order to take turns easily.

The rules are as follows; when it gets to your turn, point to an Object conspicuous enough for every one to see, the object must be within the four walls of the class and it must not be on another person, e.g. their shirts, tie, skirt; also, you cannot mention something that has been mentioned by anyone else. In todays game, no one is getting evicted, we all just have to take turns a couple of times. The session ended after three rounds, everyone at one point or the other pointed to objects that have not been mention by another Bootcamper. LIFU(A bootcamper) must have worked with some construction firms before now, he kept on pointing to different parts of thesame window, I mean, who would have thought of pointing to the Lintel of a window?.

We started with discussion session, the Food for Thought was “How to ”, unlike yesterday, I was to start the discussion, OMG!, I only have my points noted down, I’ve not really gathered my thought, I wasn’t articulate enough, I wasn’t happy with my contribution in the discussion session. we all took turns and the session ended, I learned a lot from the discussion session.

The programming session started, our Instructors went over some concepts they’ve touched during the week for the sake of revision, it was a question and answer period, sometime during the session - someone walked into the class and we all gave a round of applauds as it is our culture.

“My name is Nadaya, basically I run the Andela Boot Camp” he said. He said how we are doing so far and we all chorused Fine, Great… He said he believed that today was the best time to come see us and spend some time with us, he began to talk about himself, fellows at Andela, and the core values of Andela.

He mentioned Excellence as a value at Andela, how that everything in Andela is done with excellence in mind, also he Passion, how that what you have to do my intersect with what you really want to do. Collaboration, two heads are better than one, and Iron sharpens Iron. Integrity, he asked some Bootcampers what they think the meaning of Integrity is; there were some feedbacks, he later defined Integrity as “Keeping it real”, how that if you have chosen to do good, stick to doing good, and if its evil that you choose, stay glued it, leave no doubt on people’s mind as of where you belong.

Furthermore, though with a slight touch of humor, but in all seriousness he expressed his passion for Andela and how that Andela esteems Fellowship above all thing else; “Andela is Fellowship” he said, whatever you do affects someone else, if someone else is affected in the fellowship, the fellowship is affected. “The Fellowship should be the lens you use to judge everything!” he said.

when you find people that care about the same things that you care about and you fellowship with them, Magic happens!… and that’s what Andela is about. He encouraged that we work hard; when you work hard, show passion for what you do, you push the limits and you’re focused, you will succeed in a big way. he later took some questions which he answered then left.

The Labs session started and Instructor shared with us on the class’ Slack channel a link to Hackerrank, we were all to register and attempt to solve some problems, they were about 8 in number, some of them as follows, Insertion sort, Quick sort and others.

When the day was coming to an end, we were given assignment for the weekend, she also said we all will receive mails from the Recruitment team during the weekend, who knows what will be in the mail. I will spend my weekend with the assignments, Ruby Koans, Hackerrank, AndeLabs, I look forward to next week.