Andela Gave Me A Second Chance

At the end of the two-week boot camp at Andela’s EPIC Tower, I held on to my phone, waiting for the final email that dictates whether you are accepted or rejected. Shortly after, I got a message from Andela.

… Although we were not able to admit you into the Andela Fellowship, we would like to invite you to the Andela-21 program …

The Andela-21 program was a technical skills level-up program. It was offered to boot campers that were good, but not good enough. The moment I received that message was bittersweet. I was sad because I wasn’t accepted into the fellowship, but happy because I wasn’t completely rejected. I was given a second chance. Second chances like this don’t come often, so I jumped at it.

The program lasted for three weeks. It was a lot more stressful than the boot camp, but I must say, it was eye-opening. I learned a lot. I learned several dev skills including Continuous Integration, Git Workflow, Tasks Automation, writing high-quality code and so many other stuff.

The best part of the program was working alongside brilliant guys like McDavid, Nurudeen, Victor, Vanessa, and so on. These guys are amazing. At the end of the 3rd week, it felt like I have known them for more than three years.

The second best part was that I built an API, all by myself (though I had some help). Yes, I built a RESTful Inverted Index API! Isn’t that amazing?

Another reason why the program was amazing was my Learning Facilitator Assistant, Grace Ike. She is amazing. At a point, I grew very tired and had no more energy in me to keep pushing. But her encouraging words did the magic for me. I was revived and became more energetic than ever.

The journey isn’t over yet. At the end of the three weeks, I (as well as the other guys) got re-invited to participate in the second week of the boot camp. And today, 15th of May, marks the beginning of the second week. Over the weekend, we were divided into groups and given projects to be built and delivered within four working days.

That’s it for now. Watch out for my post at the end this week (or next). It will be a post of victory.

Cheers!