My Software Engineering Journey so far at AltSchoolAfrica
Introduction
Hello there, I am glad to have you here, thanks for following up on this piece. I promised to deliver and here I am. In case you are wondering what I am talking about; I made a post earlier on my Twitter account that since I had been getting a lot of requests about how AltSchool Africa has been so far, I would write a detailed article on my entrance to AltSchool if that particular post got at least 100 likes and trust me, my Twitter friends made sure to like the post, even though some of their reasons were questionable, like not wanting me to have my free time...lol.
Okayyyy… so they caught me.
Now to the matter, what is AltSchool Africa?
AltSchool Africa is an online school or platform for individuals looking to gain technical skills and kickstart a career in Tech, this means that all learning activities are done virtually. AltSchool Africa takes a non-traditional approach to learning by teaching courses directly connected with the selected track. They are focused on helping African students begin or continue their journey in Tech.
My Entrance into AltSchool Africa
I heard about AltSchool from a friend and mentor who had it in mind to sponsor some interested applicants for their application fees which was #10,000 per applicant, he offered to pay for me and that was it, I got started and applied for software engineering. Fast forward to a few weeks after I applied, I joined a Slack channel created to share information among the applicants. Here, we were told about the entrance examination we had to write and each applicant was sent an email that contained a link to study materials and some instructions.
As seen in this email, I received it on the 4th of November, 2021 with the Home Study Kit and instructions on what next.
I waited a few weeks while studying and preparing for my entrance exam. During the wait, the Slack channel was always used to communicate with us from time to time until the assessment email also came in.
According to the screenshot above, we were given a total of 100 questions, and the other instructions for the examination were listed.
Now, at the time when I registered at AltSchool, I only made inquiries about the School of Software Engineering because that was the only one I was interested in, I was hoping to study Mobile development at the time. Right now though, AltSchool Africa has three different schools with different tracks in them. They are listed below:
- School of Software Engineering; Backend Engineering Track, Cloud Engineering Track, Frontend Engineering Track.
- School of Product; Product Design, Product Management, Product Marketing
- School of Data: Data Analysis, Data Engineering, Data Science.
All these above are the different schools and tracks available at AltSchool Africa at the moment and if you are a beginner in Tech and you are quite confused as to which track to go into, I would recommend checking my previous article that explains the different areas in tech so you can evaluate yourself and decide which track you would fit in. No matter what your choice is, I advise you to research very well by watching YouTube videos and going to Twitter or LinkedIn to find people on that track so you can ask questions.
When I discovered Mobile development was not offered at AltSchool Africa, I decided to pick Cloud Engineering because, to be honest, I realized cloud engineers make a lot of money and I ASSUMED that cloud engineers do not have to code much…I am laughing so much at my old self right now.
Let’s continue. After I read the instructions for the examination, I wrote it and passed with a score of 94%. The questions contained logical reasoning, English Language (especially grammar), Mathematics, general software engineering questions, and a few questions from the particular track I applied for which is Cloud Engineering. (Do not fret, nothing was asked here that was not in our Home Study Kit)
Kindly read the email and you would see that there was a cut-off mark of 85%, a lot of students passed and a lot also failed, this is to remind you not to be underprepared. However, AltSchool was kind enough to give applicants that did not pass the entrance examination the grace of joining the other students for the first semester on probation, after which their performance would be evaluated. If their performance was satisfactory, they would be allowed to join as full-fledged students.
I got in, I was one of the pioneering students at AltSchool Africa! Here is a mail from Rachel Onoja, the amiable Director of Learning at AltSchool Africa, welcoming me to their institution.
After a few weeks of getting my entrance letter, there was an onboarding meeting with all AltSchoolers where our tutors and mentors were introduced. Here, we met Jerry Uke, the Lead Program Manager, Tabitha Kyavu, the Community Manager, Adedeji Oshinojo, the Programs Associate, and a few other great personnel I cannot quite remember their names at the moment.
We were told about how there were going to be different semesters in that one year of learning. First, Second, and Third Semester. The First semester was going to be general classes for all the Software Engineering students on the basics of programming, software development, basics of building web applications, and some other courses. The Second semester was for everyone to get into their various tracks and get introduced to the concepts therein. The Third Semester was for experiencing full hands-on projects, preparing the students for the outside world by working on their resumes and CVs, and working on projects with other tracks in the School of Software Engineering like software developers do in the corporate world. The semesters were to be approximately 3 months each and they ended with the students writing exams, mainly practicals, and were to be assessed to get to the next semester, the fourth semester was set aside for internship plans.
Tuition Fees and ISA
For my set, we had options regarding the payment of our tuition fees:
- You could pay the tuition fees at once during the session.
- You could pay a certain amount in installments monthly.
- Pay-As-You-Earn: This is the contract many of us signed, that after leaving AltSchool and getting a job, we would pay the tuition fees back in installments.
Note: I only have this here as they were given to the first set of students, I do not have any idea or much information on how payments are being made for the tuition fees right now.
First Semester
For the First Semester, all SOE students were taking classes on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, these three are the building blocks for building web applications and they are very important for our skills in software development. All students were given access to their personal LMS (Learning Management System) where all study materials were to be posted weekly, students were also grouped into different learning circles, and at the end of the semester, each “Circle” worked on a project for their examination. Online classes were held at least twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays from 5:55 pm to 8:00 pm WAT. The purpose of these classes was for the tutors to go over the topic for the week with the students and for the students to ask questions concerning whatever they learned for the week. The tutors for the general HTML, CSS, and JS classes were Oluwasetemi Ojo, Daniel Adesoji, Rising Odegua, and Tobi Bakare.
Tabby, short for Tabitha Kavyu, our very beautiful and friendly community manager anchored a program with Jerry Uke, our highly respected and most popular mentor at AltSchool, every Friday. They named these Friday sessions Fun Friday, and over time when we had less fun and more career-oriented talks with invited speakers, the Fun Friday name was changed to Town Hall Sessions. Each Fun Friday/ Town Hall session was characterized by all AltSchoolers joining the Hopin Meeting session to have various talks with the management, ranging from personal issues to career talks, I love these sessions a lot. Different speakers have been brought from time to time, great and very successful minds in the Tech Space, the likes of; HackSultan; a popular Tech influencer and a major stakeholder in AltSchool Africa, Samson Goddy; our renowned open source guru, Jumoke Aleoke Malachi; Human Resources Expert, Charles Odilli; Backend Senior Software Engineer. These are the very few names I can remember at the moment but trust me, we have had a lot of interesting speakers over at AltSchool. The Fun Friday sessions were not limited to the First Semester alone, it was a regular thing until the end of the Third Semester which is where we are at right now.
The First semester was very interesting and packed with various events, we had a few assignments, we tried a lot of LeetCode challenges, and worked on projects in our various circles. I was the Team Lead for my Circle, Circle 396, where we created Phonie, a Web Application that could take a user’s phone number and the UI would indicate what network the number belonged to. Here is a link to our project https://phonie.circle-396.repl.co/?#. It was fun working on this with my circle members, it taught me the skills required to be a leader and a team player.
Another memorable event at AtSchool Africa in the first semester was the #yourcityAltSchoolHangout event. AltSchoolers met up in different parts of their location to hang out, I live in Ibadan so I met up with fellow AltSchoolers who reside there, I met a lot of my favorite techies there, and even got reunited with an old friend. Here is the link to our pictures at the hangout in Ibadan…which brings me to this talk about COMMUNITIES & FRIENDS.
Communities & Friends
As they say, a tree does not make a forest. Making the right friends at AltSchool has helped me improve a lot in learning and I have been motivated a lot to not slow down each time I felt like giving up, my friends have always been there to pick me up. I am an extrovert so I would say it is quite easy for me to make friends, I met people at the hangout we had and they have turned out to be my closest friends in Tech, I also have friends from my Cloud Engineering Track, I cannot forget to mention Twitter too, some of my favorite people and connections have been made from there.
However, it is also very important to not get carried away with too many friends, do not get too busy making friends that you forget the actual reason you are where you are. Not all friends are positive and great-minded, some slow you down or try to stop you from achieving anything, they like it when you are not doing well or getting recognized, do not give too many people access to your dreams and goals because as they also say, too many cooks spoil the broth. I am very conscious of this and I can say, so far, I have not made bad friends, my Techie friends do not rest on their oars and they are always ready to help with one thing or the other.
First Semester Ends
The first semester ended on a good note, I attended classes regularly, did a great job on my project, and engaged well. Your attendance in class, assignment submissions, LMS progress, engagement, and interaction with your classmates and tutors matter if you want good grades. Here is a breakdown of my first-semester result.
Yippee, I passed the first semester exams with a score of 92.4% and got into the second semester.
At the end of the first semester, we all got videos on each track in the school and how each of them worked, these videos were very important as they helped a lot of us understand what each engineering track did. Because of this, some people switched their tracks and got into the ones that they could relate to better.
Second Semester
As I mentioned earlier, things got more serious in the second semester and we were all added to channels strictly created for our tracks, we continued solving LeetCode challenges, and we also got added to new learning circles, and this time, I was added to Circle 90. Backend students were to pick between Python, GO Lang, and Node JS, Frontend students built on their knowledge of building web applications with HTML, CSS, and JS by proceeding to learn React JS in the second semester, they then did Vue JS in the third semester. As for Cloud Engineering students, we were introduced to the basics of Cloud engineering, the Linux Operating System, how the internet works, and some other notable topics in Cloud Engineering. In cloud engineering, we learned Version Control with Git, configuration management with Ansible, and Networking, and also did quite a number of assignments and projects. The second semester centered mainly around doing practicals, and a lot of general workshops with all AltSchoolers in the School of Engineering. LeetCode challenges were also very important to the learning process, each person had to do some LeetCode challenges every week.
I would like to give cloud engineering students reading this an extra tip, I promise I am not being biased…lol. Good knowledge of Python, Bash Scripting, Linux management, GO Lang, YAML, Networking, HTML, CSS, and JS are all very necessary in this track. Being versatile with different languages and cloud service providers gives you an edge because the cloud engineering scope is wide and even though you would be taught the basics, you would have to do a lot of studying and practicing by yourself.
For our second semester examination and project in Cloud Engineering, we were instructed to deploy an application with its configuration defined in an ansible playbook, along with a bash script that would install and set up a database, I would love to get into details but let us keep it short for the sake of non-cloud readers.
We rounded up the semester with the project above and got our results for the semester. We do not have a complete breakdown of the second-semester performance yet but I got a score of 94% on the examination meaning I passed well and could proceed to the third semester. Here is a link to my GitHub repo for the project.
If I could, I believe you can do better too. The secret is to study extra hard and take on as many personal projects as you can, always remember to ask for help whenever you get stuck, people are always willing to help so do not be embarrassed to ask for explanations.
Third Semester
The going got tough but the tough was not going away, especially for cloud engineering AltSchoolers. This semester, we all, including other tracks, made a lot of hands-on projects, did a lot of LeetCode challenges, and had general workshops where we discussed and prepared our resumes, portfolio websites, and social media for hiring opportunities.
This semester was the toughest of all with various projects and coursework, many speakers were invited for sessions, to talk to AltSchoolers, and an internship trade fair was also organized towards the end of the semester whereby recruiters watched AltSchoolers showcase their projects. The semester ended with an examination for which results are yet to be announced. So far so good, I have documented the process of my journey at AltSchool till the moment I write this article. The fourth semester comes up in a bit. Thank you for reading this far.
Conclusion
I conclude thus; AltSchool is a great platform for beginners in Tech and they provide that platform that you need for you to get started or serious. Working in groups or working on projects with deadlines enhances your ability to study better and this, in turn, gives you more confidence and experience to get into the career world. I believe AltSchool is a great launch pad for world talent, I would recommend AltSchool to Tech newbies.
Thanks to the extracurricular activities we were introduced to, for example, version control with Git, soft skills, career orientation, preparation for job interviews, and preparation of CVs and Portfolios, among a few others…with all these, a lot of us have been equipped to go into the Tech ecosystem and bloom.
To get the best out of whatever you are into, it is recommended to go the extra mile, always ask for help, be present, learn to pick yourself back up if you ever feel discouraged, stop procrastinating, spend extra hours learning, always keep practicing, make good friends, never miss deadlines and pass on your knowledge to as many as you can. As Rachel Onoja would say… “May the Force be with you”
Thank you for reading this far, special thanks and credit goes to my longtime friend and fellow AltSchooler, Oluwaseun Awosise, for helping me compile very important information. Thanks also, Twitter Peeps for setting my hands in motion to write this article I had been planning for weeks.
Kindly clap and follow me for more updates and articles, thank you again, dear reader!
