Week 0 of 208

208 is the number of weeks I have as an Andela Fellow. This being the on-boarding week, it’s clear the amount of work that lies ahead of us and it is pretty exciting! The last three days have been quite intense. They were thoroughly prepared for us and induction schedules flowed flawlessly.

We now have a clear outlook on what the the first phase of the Fellowship will look like for us and we have literally hit the road running. We received our stack curriculum yesterday and contrary to what most of us expected, we will be taking up a totally different stack from what we were used to, during bootcamp and before. \o/

In the last couple of days I’ve come to learn that Andela doesn’t necessarily teach a Fellow how to program or code, what Andela does is teach one how to learn. This, in my opinion, is more important because it is with this skill that one can then go out and explore the world.

I was speaking to someone a couple of days ago we were discussing how there are some things we have since given up on. For him, it was getting into programming; for me, it was learning how to play musical instruments. Beliefs mirrored in this conversation had holes poked into them after today’s growth mindset session.

A key question was asked, “Is intelligence a factor of nature and genetics or is intelligence nurtured?” Everyone had a chance to give their opinion and what amazed me was how we justify beliefs that do us more harm than good without research or data to back it up. I saw the learning process in a whole new light and I can confidently say that I can be as good as the best in anything I set out to learn. I also decided to go back and dust off my guitar. :-)

The expectations for us are high. They have been broken down to a day-to-day basis compounding into weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, expectations. My immediate plan is to figure out how to learn fast and leverage on the myriad resources available as well as fellow Andelans. Learn | Ask | Do | Progress | Seek Feedback | Reflect | Repeat.

It has been a long journey getting here and as I embark on this new one, I look forward to every single minute of it.