My Udacity Nanodegree Experience
My final days in university were very confusing. There were a lot of decisions I had to make that would influence the rest of my life and I was very scared. I was completely in love with Tech at the time and I knew it was the path I wanted to follow, so like any serious person, I decided to set a few goals.
Before graduating from university, I was an active member of the Google Developer community and I helped out as much as I could.I didn’t realize how that would benefit me going forward.
With the help of some wonderful people, I was able to secure my first Internship at Devcenter in June 2017.
My first day was very memorable. The C.E.O asked me to rate my HTML & CSS skills and with as much confidence as I could muster, I rated myself a 5/10. Everyone laughed and I was given my first task. I flopped so bad, they couldn’t even rate me 1/10 after that project.
I was encouraged to continue though because that was the only way I could get better. Seun then advised me to take a programming course that would help me understand structure and portfolio building. We researched on it and narrowed it down to either Treehouse or a Nanodegree program.
Towards the end of July, just after my convocation, Udacity was putting some of their programs on sale and I saw it as an opportunity to dive in. The program was to start in August and was for 12 months, however, according to the curriculum, it was possible to complete it in 6 months. My intention was to finish the program before the year ended but I was unable to achieve this. I, however, was able to finish it in 5 months.
MY EXPERIENCE
Starting the course was a bit scary for me. I was constantly going through the curriculum, worried about what was ahead. I would sometimes jump into other sections of the course just for a brief insight of what was expected of me. I started the program gradually and learning Python was the first step which was exciting. I often looked out for resources I could use to compliment what I was learning at each point.
The MIT OpenCourseWare was a great resource for my Intro to Python. After a few weeks, I was done and ready to deliver on my first project.
It wasn’t as smooth as I imagined it will be, but Udacity helped a lot. The platform provided me with mentors who regularly checked up on me and helped when I had any challenges. A Slack channel was created for everyone taking the Udacity program and their mentors. It was very impressive and interactive. I had an advantage over the rest though, because I was privileged enough to be working in a Tech company and had access to experienced professionals like Balo, who remains a great mentor and friend.
Considering that it was an online program, the possibility of losing interest was very high. In fact, I had to pause the program at some point because learning the practicality of tech is a lot different from learning in theory and I was a bit overwhelmed. There wasn’t any exam to pour all my knowledge in after some months but I was resilient.
I got to the section of the program where I could learn about Backend and I loved it so much! It was a really long session but it was by far the most interesting to me! I learned to work with MySQL, PostgreSQL, command line, CRUD development, Authentication and Authorization, local permission and APIs.
I had to take a break after this to serve my country (NYSC). After the break, I realized I had wasted a lot of time and I will not be able to meet my ‘end of year’ goal. I got my motivation to finish when I realized I would have to pay an extra $200 to Udacity if I didn’t complete it in time.
Upon graduation, Udacity goes the extra mile to make you more hireable. Your Linkedin and Udacity profiles are reviewed by their team and I think that’s really cool. I haven’t done this yet but it’s great to know that these guys are ready at any time to review my portfolio.
I am more confident in myself and my skills and I am really optimistic about my future. I will definitely recommend this program to anyone interested in taking a step further in their career.
You can check out Udacity’s courses and also try out some of their free programs.
I am entirely grateful to the people that constantly encourage me to be better, the Devcenter team, CU dev community, my friends and my beautiful mother who financed all this wildness!
Subscribe
Devcenter matches remote teams to software projects. We build world class products, together with technology and top talent from a network of developers and designers in Africa.
Devcenter Square is a community driven network of over 2800 Software Developers and Designers in Africa.
We bring you all the latest happenings in the developer ecosystem in Africa, right into your email box.
