How I made it to heaven — my Andela’s pre-Bootcamp experience
My name is Ekpang Michael and I’m not a lazy Nigerian youth. Okay, that was just an intro.
Yes i’m not yet in heaven but I’m pretty close, let’s just say I’m in purgatory, you might be wondering why heaven, well when you are passionate about software development and you come across an opportunity like Andela Fellow, an opportunity where you get to be trained by world-class developers and possible become one, I don't know what best to describe that if not “heaven”.
For me getting into Andela is like a Christian finally getting into heaven.
Let me tell you my story, I was among the lucky ones that made it through the almighty Andela technical test and got an invite for the Bootcamp, that was one of the happiest days of my life, but little did i know that what lies ahead was like a scary movie, one which I still don't know the end.
It all started when I got the first challenge (Fast-food-fast) notice the fast, I think it was intentional because you have to learn and build as fast as possible within the shortest time frame.
I was immediately pressed by the time I finished reading the project requirement like literally, I had to use the toilet. Even though I was already family with programming, it was still very scary because i needed to use tools I never used before, like travis ci, pivotal tracker, writing test and integration code coverage. This were things I saw in movies or tech talk ( I felt those guy had superpowers).
Every task brought along its own challenges, I thought I knew how to use git until I was faced with creating branches, merging, pull request, integrating TDD (test driven development) with travis ci and following best practices.
I had to unlearn all the crap I thought I knew and started afresh, I read all the medium post I could find, watched YouTube videos, practice! practice!! and practice!!! I can’t overemphasize that. It was one of the toughest weeks of my life but my passion to become a world-class developer kept me through and through, I have so many sleepless nights, but I said to myself Michael you have to make me proud if others can do this then you can too.
My story will not be complete without mentioning Tomi Adebanjo, Tomi is one of those geniuses that just made it through to heaven(Andela), I reach out to Tomi through a friend Osifo (great guy, also works at Andela). Adebanjo was a God sent even with his tight schedule he still made out time to respond to my chat and provided feedback when necessary I will be forever grateful to him.
In summary, I was able to scale through the first 2 challenges because I was willing to learn and unlearn, reach out for help when necessary, sacrificed so many nights and some I think it was just divine intervention. I also learn to celebrate every little win to keep me motivated. I went from not knowing how to write test to getting a 100% code coverage (I took myself out that day).
So here I’m in purgatory where only the best of the best are selected to enter heaven, all I can do now is to keep learning, keep breaking and fixing and finally hoping for the best.
All I can say is …This Heavenly Race I no go tire.