Challenges from my recent past

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body. -Seneca

The past few weeks has been filled with challenges. These challenges have definitely made me more resilient and taught me a lot. I’ve definitely become more resilient dealing with these challenges.
Well, I signed up for it, but when I did, I honestly did not imagine that I was going to feel like I got put inside a washing machine that has been turned on.
I applied to the Andela fellowship program, after which I got an email with the home study materials in preparation for the home study exercises. I studied this religiously. Not long after, I got an email from Andela which contained the link to the home study test. This test was going to determine those that would be selected to proceed with the technical tests.
After a few minutes of trying to psyche myself out, I opened the link and the test was relatively easy. I felt relieved.
After that was the test from qualified.io, these ones were challenging because there was a time limit of 4 hours and there were multiple sections of questions.

After the tests, the successful ones were sent a technical challenge to do at home. I chose to do the Kaprekar’s constant.
I got an email saying I have been invited to the interviews, I felt happy and nervous at the same time. I have never liked interviews. In fact, I hated interviews. They made me nervous and I do not like being nervous. I think a major calming factor was that the interview was a get to know you interview and your thought process while solving the challenge.
The interview was cool even though I was a little nervous but a few minutes in, nerves were gone.

After the interview, I felt pretty good about myself, because i was able to explain my code very well and that was huge progress for me considering I used to be so scared of JavaScript and technical code problems.
Next stage was the boot camp. Those that were successful with the interviews got an email inviting them to boot camp which was set to start at a particular date. Prior to the start of the boot camp though, we were sent prep materials and a technical challenge . The prep materials by Andela would help us get through the boot camp and the technical challenge was a project that should be completed by the end of the boot camp.

The challenge was to build a store manager app. This was divided to four sprints: the UI phase, endpoints, database, and last to integrate the backend with the frontend app.
The first two was to be done while at home. When I got to the boot camp, I was instructed to show my assigned ‘LFA ’— ‘Learning Facilitators what I’d been able to achieve with the project. I expected to be scolded because i had not completed what i was supposed to complete but I learnt that the philosophy at Andela is not just to be able to code, but your ability to receive and implement feedback you’ve gotten and also ask questions.
Soft skills are extremely important at Andela, and your ability to integrate yourself into a team that’s strange to you and build relationships, align yourself with the teams goals, and help your team move forward are some of the things they look at.
The boot camp phase has been very challenging, definitely not an easy feat , but being able to adapt to the changes, deadlines, pressure and unending task is a skill I’m sure would help me wherever i find myself in.

The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he’s dead. -Bette Davis

This boot camp definitely opened my mind and my scope of thinking, I’m curious to know what else is out there. I feel inspired and challenged to push myself to be the best version of me there is and not do it at a comfortable pace.

One popular saying at Andela is ‘yoyo’ meaning ‘you are responsible for your own learning’.

This speaks to me because it definitely means that you can get yourself to wherever you want to be by learning the necessary skills and applying it with integrity.

“The tests we face in life’s journey are not to reveal our weaknesses but to help us discover our inner strengths. We can only know how strong we are when we strive and thrive beyond the challenges we face.” ― Kemi Sogunle

“Without being pushed to the wall, we will have remained in our comfortable zone. But this circumstance challenges us to find the courage to move on.” — Lailah Gifty Akita

At Andela, you get pushed to the wall, repeatedly. This is a good thing. At first, hearing about how challenging the process of getting into Andela is my first thought is if it gets too difficult i’ll just leave. Seeing how much I’ve improved and been able to adapt to new changes and how much stronger I am at embracing problems and looking forward to solving these problems now. I welcome these challenges. To be successful, you need to first identify the psychology you have already that’s going to negatively affect your ability to be open minded and be open to new changes and get rid of these thoughts or mindsets.

I have from these few weeks learned to embrace change, as those that are able to adapt in life go further.

Also staying motivated and committed are things that i learned or improved on being here. At the Andela boot camp, I learned from some of my peers that giving up is not an option. To keep pushing and working at it, with positive thoughts and thinking back to previous challenges that you’ve overcome definitely helps me stay motivated. When some problem looks to be difficult and impossible, I just reflect back to when I thought getting something done was impossible but just sticking with it and choosing to apply myself helped me to break through and solve that problem.

Staying committed is necessary in going the long way. This helps you when you face difficult problems. When I’ve committed to a project like i have to Andela, I personally feel like I betrayed myself for not following through and giving up easy. So whenever I face a difficult problem I commit to solving that problem, this mindset helps me to stick with the problem and not give up. Helping my team mates with problems also keeps the energy up among my team mates as well as appreciating their assistance whenever they help me.

The Andela boot camp experience has definitely taught me a lot more than I expected to leave with. I’m happy to be leaving with a lot more knowledge than I came in with.

I’ve learned that success comes in a very prickly package. Whether you choose to accept it or not is up to you. It’s what you choose to do with it, the people you choose to surround yourself with. Always choose people that are better than you. Always choose people that challenge you and are smarter than you. Always be the student. Once you find yourself to be the teacher, you’ve lost it. -Sandra Bullock