In my part of the world, there is a popular tradition of making yearly declarations. It goes something like; 2020 — “My year of double promotions”, “My year of fulfillment”, “My year of breakthrough”, “My year of supernatural abundance”. And the list goes on and on. I am usually not a fan of this tradition. Last year was the first time I made such declaration and I did it in the middle of the year. I named last year my year of adversity. If you want to know why, ask me because that is a topic for another day. Also, this year, something happened early. Around March ending, I had completed four certification courses on scholarships so I named this year my year of learning.

Title = 2020 My Year of Learning

Lo and behold, My prophecy received life. As a result of the lock down and restrictions in movement due to the COVID 19 pandemic, many learning opportunities started to spring up left, right, center, up and down. Many online learning platforms were offering free one month access for their paid courses. Some were restricted based on regions and some people relocated virtually in order not to miss out on these benefits.

Bad Good News

All these sound like good news right? But something was not just right, like a callback hell that is difficult to manage. I was caught up in the web of tutorials hell. Always learning but never really putting the knowledge to good use. And sometimes, like a vicious cycle, I kept perambulating the same mountain, cowering without enough motivation to climb it.

DevCareer to the rescue

Around may, DevCareer, the most loved by Nigerian aspiring developers started an initiative to help and support those of us in need of and who would maximize an opportunity of getting free learning subscription on Progate and also monthly data subscription for internet access. Can you beat that? My first time of seeing such. If you know of such, I’m sorry I skipped it. So I applied and I got accepted into another learning opportunity. At first I applied with the mindset of having nothing to lose but it turned out to be better than what I expected.

The difference is Progate

I’ve had the privilege of getting scholarships on various learning platforms and they all have their strengths and weaknesses but one thing you can never take away from Progate is that their style of presentation is beginner friendly. I would recommend Progate to beginners as the first go-to platform for every course available on their platform. Their pattern is like the way we learn how to ride a bicycle. You have someone holding the bicycle for you to keep it steady and you are not aware when they leave you and you are riding it all the way by yourself. That is the closest I could get to describing their style of presentation.

Another Tutorial Hell?

Well this journey was meant to last for three months and we are already at the tail end but the experience is not that of another tutorial hell because we had loads and loads of fun and activities beyond learning on the Progate platform. We had group tasks to help us put to practice the things we learnt based on our tracks. For our first tasks, group team leads were selected with empty groups. Now the rest of us had to market ourselves to get noticed and be selected by the team leads. This helped us to work on our elevator pitch. Trust me, I elevated my pitch so well that in a matter of minutes I got requests from different team leads but I decided to accept the first person that approached me.

Team Tasks

I once heard someone say that a task that would take a developer four days to complete, would take four developers four weeks to complete. I really cannot say how true that is but I understand the point. Working in teams is not an easy task. Working in teams is a task on it’s own, different from the task itself. And this was an opportunity to learn and build good team spirit and there is always room for improvement. I had my mistakes and I learned from them and that of others and by the end of the first task, I was able to put to good use my skills and the knowledge I gained from the Progate platform.

What? Another Team?

Just when I was getting used to my team, another task was announced and the teams were going to be reshuffled. Back to square one of having to learn the modus operandi of a different set. So this has also helped to expand my network as it gave the opportunity of getting closer to more people. Beyond networking and team work, the second team task introduced me to some tools I had never attempted before. This task involved remote pair programming. I was in a group of four plus our mentor five. So five of us in different physical locations worked on the same set of files stored locally on one PC at the same time. Imagine I am typing on line 20 and Bisola is typing on line 4 while Theresa is typing on line 2 then Stephen is typing on line 30 and our mentor observing and guiding us in real time. It was so much fun hearing each other while coding and the session would last for long without us being aware that we’ve been working for so long.

All work and no play doesn’t pay

We had two channels on slack where we usually go to make trouble. Yes o! We used to make trouble. Why won’t we make trouble when the name of our coordinator is TroubleMaker? So we make use of the Random and Games channel to do things that are not just work, work and work. Games are hosted from time to time and the winners get prizes. And the Random channel for light headed discussions that usually result in throwing of banters. And the king of Banters is one guy called Yamaha, oh sorry Yahaya and his queen is one lady called Blessing. If you go to the Random channel and you cannot find at least one of them, then I suggest you would have to check your internet connection.

Way Forward

The next steps for me have already kicked off. First I already see a lot of improvements on my freelance web development projects beyond the UI/UX to the writing of easy to maintain optimized codes. Also I just embarked on a four months training with a prestigious Software Development company where I would be learning some core technologies in the world of Software Development. Now I am beginning to have an idea of what it means for the sky to be one’s take off point of reference.

Little Secret

I have two secret super heroes (SSH). Joshua Folorunsho and Feyikemi Agboola in this cohort. Why are they my super heroes? That would be a topic for another day. Big shout out to the rest of all my fellows in this journey. Time and space would not permit me to mention all your names.

Appreciation

Special Appreciation to:

Progate: You helped me solidify some concepts that used to make me look for things that are actually not missing.

Okoye: For how you managed the program. You are indeed a splendiferous manager. (Chop Knuckle)

Sultan and Co: For this initiative and all you do to support and equip aspiring developers. Also for the hangout sessions with seasoned developers who shared with us useful tips and advises from their wealth of experience.

Finally, to my one and only, Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ for the gift of life.

VGG Virtual Internship Assignment.

The CSS box model is crucial and fundamental to understand as far as layout and positioning are concerned in styling of a web page. This is so because every element in HTML generate a box around it and these boxes have properties that can be illustrated using what is popularly know as the CSS Box Model. You can view the box model from the developer tool by simply right clicking on an element on the web page then click on “inspect”.

Once you are in the developer tools menu, ensure the “Elements” tab and “Styles” tab are selected (might be slightly different for other browsers). Then scroll down, you will see the box model for the element you are inspecting as shown below.

From the image above, we can see that for a given element, the box model has three properties that defines it; padding, border and margin. If you would picture a web page in your mind using the box model, you would see the elements in form of the cells of a table arranged vertically and horizontally as the case may be. And based on this, let’s try to define the properties of the box model.

Margin: This is the vertical or horizontal space between one cell and another cell (cell here represents the boundary of an element).

Border: This is the demarcation of an element. It is invisible by default but can be made to be displayed using appropriate property-value pairs.

Padding: This is the space inside the border between the border and the content of the element.

Having considered the box model, we are now ready to look at CSS positioning. Positioning simply refers to the placement of elements on a web page using the various positioning methods. Css positioning methods include;

Absolute: Position is calculated from the top left of the web page.

Relative: Position is calculated with respect to the page order. (the preceding element is the reference point)

Fixed: This is similar to absolute positioning but in addition, when used on an element, the element does not move relative to the page movement. So for an element with absolute positioning, such and element can be scrolled into and out of view while for an element with fixed positioning, it is just stationary.

Sticky: This makes and element to act like it is switching it’s positioning style between relative and fixed depending on the scroll position of the user according to the values set.

Using some of the techniques briefly outlined above, I have created a simple accessibility compliant contact form here: https://wisestme.github.io/VGG_Virtual_Internship/Assignment/form.html

Link to repo: https://github.com/wisestme/VGG_Virtual_Internship/tree/master/Assignment

Thank you.

Appreciation

First and foremost, I would like to appreciate the initiators of this wonderful initiative, Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA. Also a very big thanks to Udacity for the way they do what they do. I ‘ve had the privilege of gaining paid and free access to various online learning platforms and I do not need to mention names but if you ‘ve ever come across other platforms, you would agree with me that Udacity’s style of presentation is second to none. Some platforms dwell on videos, some are text based, some combine both but Udacity’s style is just perfect for me because of the way it constantly engages me, ensuring I ‘m focused all the way.

I could go on and on to talk about the creativity and innovation in the online communities, how you do a Nanodegree program and you come back next time for another program and the experience is completely new with beautiful activities to aid your learning experience. But this post is actually not supposed to be about Udacity’s quality of service delivery so I ‘m gonna have to leave that for another day. Last but not least, thank you to my fellow scholars for all the motivation, encouragement and support. You guys are the best of the bests.

No deception here

I know somebody is beginning to see me as a deceiver, wondering how the title of this post has anything to do with what I ‘m writing about. Won’t you allow me die before you bury me? Sure I do have a problem with Udacity. This post is supposed to be about my favourite lesson out of the lessons i ‘ve covered so far. I ‘ve been able to complete eighteen lessons, now I ‘m on the nineteenth one yet I ‘m having a hard time picking one. I mean how am i supposed to do this. So that is the problem am having. All the lessons are that interesting and there is no way I would be able to pick the most interesting one. Here is what I have decided to do. I am going to write about the one I have a special attachment to. Yes, there is one I have an emotional attachment to. This one reminds me of something very funny. And that is lesson 7. And it’s about Tagging, Branching and Merging on Git. Now what is this fond memory about?

Background

A couple of months ago, I took part in an online internship where I happened to be in the Frontend Track. This internship dwelt majorly on teamwork so we usually get a lot of tasks that required collaboration. Git and Github happened to be the versioning tools we were required to use. Then I had a very shallow understanding of Git and Github. Whenever I needed to do something, I just do a search on how to do whatever. So I use the search results as a guide, not knowing what I was really doing, hoping I don’t break something at the end of the day.

So onetime we were given a task and for the first time I needed to work on a branch assigned to me. So as usual, Google is my good friend and I came across ‘git checkout’ for the first time and I went ahead to use it. Then the files I was supposed to work on disappeared from my local repository. I checked the master on Github and everything was complete. It was so mysterious to me and I continued in a vicious cycle of cloning and pulling but each time I checkout, the files I was supposed to work on would disappear. I eventually succeeded in using the most stupid hack of all time. But it eventually worked and that is a story for another post.

Now what made it funny is that I thought some people were witch haunting me. But why would anybody want to do that? Actually, I had spoken out on behalf of my team members. Something happened, most of the team members refused to speak out when the team leaders were being questioned on a report given against them to the organizers. So I spoke out in sincerity and they had to reorganize the way they were carrying on with distributing tasks. It was after this incident that I had that experience with Git checkout command. So I concluded that someone among the leaders had a very advanced knowledge of Git and they have conspired to make sure I am unable to proceed. But when my hack eventually pulled through, I felt victorious thinking they would feel ashamed when they see my Pull Request.

So when I got to Lesson 7 on the Bertelsmann Tech Scholarship Challenge Course in the Cloud Track, I laughed at myself when I now understood how branching works. And that is what I have chosen to share with you. So now you can put on your sit belt and ensure your windows are closed because we are about to fly to a height that is….

Git Tagging, Branching and Merging

Tagging
Git tag is used to add a label to a particular point in your commit history. For instance you have made ten commits, even though each commit has a message stating what it does, these ten commits could collectively achieve a purpose and you might want to put a tag at that point.

Git Tag Command

$ git tag -a Version3.0

This will open your code editor and wait for you to supply a message for the tag.

The “-a” flag tells Git to create an annotated flag. If you don’t provide the flag then it’ll create what’s called a lightweight tag.

Annotated tags include additional information such as:

• the person who made the tag
• the date the tag was made
• a message for the tag

So it is recommended you add the “a” flag.

Verify Tag

After saving and quitting the editor, the command line does not indicate the status of your action. So how do we know that a tag was actually added to the project? Simple. Just type out git tag, it will display all tags that are in the repository.

Deleting A Tag

What if you accidentally misspelled something in the tag’s message, or typed the actual tag name wrongly. How could you fix this? The easiest way is just to delete the tag and make a new one.

A Git tag can be deleted with the -d flag (for delete!) and the name of the tag:

Adding A Tag To A Past Commit

Our tagging method so far tags the most recent commit. What if you wanted to tag a commit that occurred farther back in the history of your repo?

All you have to do is provide the SHA of the commit you want to tag.

Branching

By default, there is always a branch on you repo called Master. Every commit made is on the master branch until you have created another branch. A branch enables you to work on the same project in different isolated environments.

Making a commit after creating a branch does not move that commit to the newly created branch because there is a pointer called “Head” which is still pointing to the Master. To make a commit to a branch, you would first have to switch the Head pointer to that branch. So let’s look at the codes for creating a branch and also switching between branches.

Create A Branch

To create a branch, all you have to do is use git branch and the name of the branch you want it to create.

$ git branch testBranch

Running git branch alone without the name of the branch would only list all the branches you have in your repo.

The git checkout Command

Remember that when a commit is made that it will be added to the current branch. So even though we created the new branch, no new commit will be added to it since we are yet to switch to it. To switch, we use the git checkout command.

$ git checkout testBranch

The Active Branch

The fastest way to determine the active branch is to look at the output of the git branch command. An asterisk will appear next to the name of the active branch. Please note that only files in the active branch would be visible in the directory containing your repo. It’s not witch haunting.

Delete A Branch

If you want to delete the branch, you’d use the -d flag. The command below includes the -d flag which tells Git to delete the provided branch

$ git branch -d testBranch

A branch is used to do development work. I does not affect the project. Once you make the change on the branch, you can combine that branch into the master branch this “combining of branches” is called “merging”. Then you can delete the branch. So how do we merge?

Merging

Combining branches together is called merging. Merging makes a commit so it’s very important to know which branch you’re on when you’re about to merge branches together. Let’s go back to the master.

The Merge Command

The git merge command is used to combine Git branches:

$ git merge testBranch

When a merge happens, Git will:

• look at the branches that it’s going to merge
• look back along the branch’s history to find a single commit that both branches have in their commit history
• combine the lines of code that were changed on the separate branches together
• makes a commit to record the merge

Now we can safely delete the branch.

What If A Merge Fails?

Git is able to combine our work on the various branches. However, there are times when it runs into problems trying to do a merge. When this happens, it is called a merge conflict, a topic for another day.

Thank you.

Introduction

We all know what happy ending means. But for anyone that has a double mind on it, it simply means for an event to end in a pleasant way and that is not what this piece is about. However, it is a necessary starting point for this piece. This piece is actually a follow up on an earlier write up titled “I m GROWing with Google” which happened to be a follow up on a much earlier write up titled “A journey of endless miles” So in essence, this piece titled “Happy Ending” is like the season three of the first write up titled “The Journey of Endless miles”.

Why write

Now how does happy ending relate to this write up? Well not this write up alone. Happy ending has a relationship with every write up whether positive or negative and most write ups usually end in a pleasant way. Why is that so? You see, many times, we miss the real purpose of writing. We sometimes think that writing should be for show off. To show our accomplishments, achievements, abilities and everything positive about us. And there is nothing wrong with any of those but they should not be the purpose or motivation for our writings. Irrespective of the light in which your write up portrays you, if that write up is not for your private consumption, then the primary motivation for your write up should be to motivate, edify, build up somebody using your knowledge and experiences.

Good or bad

So in essence, whether your journey ended well or it did not end well or it has not even ended, the question is, can it be a source of help to somebody else? If the answer is in the affirmative, then you are good to go. And it is based on this that this piece is given birth to. And please remember that this is like a follow up experience on two previous write ups. So if you have an idea of the content of the initial write ups, then this should be straight forward.

Certification is not enough

Nevertheless, I will just rewind a little bit. As at the time of the previous write up, I had a job and I stated in it that I was applying for internships and I was certain I was going to get one sooner or later. Why was I employed and still looking for an internship opportunity? Well after I got my Front End Web Developer Nanodegree certificate from Udacity, I felt it was time to make the career switch from a Technical Customer Care Specialist to a Front End Web Developer. Given I had gotten the certification through studying and executing the required task but the knowledge was merely mental. I wanted to be an embodiment of web development. I wanted a job that would not be different from what i was learning.

Confusion

Finally i got an internship opportunity for a web development role. It was an unpaid internship. Money did not matter to me because learning was my priority. It was to be unpaid for two months but about three weeks into the program, all hell was let loose against me. Some personal matters of which the details would not be necessary here. But the summary of it is that i got into a financial crisis, two of my laptops packed up, continuing with the internship became impossible for me and confusion of a very high degree sets in. I also lost my house in all of these.

Had it been that my laptops were still functional, I would not have been perturbed.

I did not lose everything

So now no house, no money, no job and worst of all no laptop. At this point I realized that Jesus is more than enough for me. I had to get closer to my saviour. After few weeks, I got used to staying without a laptop. I never knew I could stay for two days without touching a laptop. So my pursuit to learn web development took away almost everything I had but for Jesus. And there is nothing abnormal with this experience though. It should be expected because when you get committed to a cause, every other thing dies. Even in the Bible, there is a parable of a man who discovered a treasure hidden in a field. He went and sold everything he had then used the money to buy that field.

Web development my hidden treasure

Web development is a treasure that I have found and it is a treasure to me for many reasons. For instance, I enjoy working with computers. Any task that has to do with computers, trust me I can stay awake all night working. Also, any task that has to do with me using tools to create stuffs, count me in. Be it creating graphic designs, music beats, games or web pages and things of those sort are fun to me. Beyond getting paid for my job, enjoying the job is always a plus. Imagine you getting paid for having fun. Also, I like liberty to grow. The job I was doing had no space for a higher movement. Maybe it had and I was the one who was not seeing it. And if it had and I was not seeing it, what difference would that have made to me?

A bird in hand not worth two in the bush

So against all odds, I quit my job. I left a field where i was experienced to another field where I was a complete novice. I left my comfort zone to an unfamiliar territory. I left the known for the unknown. I gave up my bird in hand to pursue the ones flying in the forest. First of March I quit my job and now we are in November. It was around May that I got access to a laptop again. First a friend’s laptop and then my sister’s laptop which I am using up till now. The journey is still on and through this period I have been up, i have been down. I have experienced things I never knew I would — good, bad and ugly. But the good news is that as the days go by, I am getting better as a web developer.

I m Gaining

The high points for me are;

1. Getting to the stage 8 of the HNG internship. I learnt a lot in the program despite the poor organisation of the program.
2. I also made it to the project phase of the ALC 4.0 and in fact we are awaiting the announcement or notification to those who will make it to the exam phase.
3. I am also working as a volunteer with a non profit foundation where I teach web development to complete beginners. I also double as a web developer for the foundation (Foundation for moral Value Reorientation).
4. I was also a volunteer at the 2019 Concatenate conference where I got my first dev shirts, stickers and stockings.

Conclusion

Gradually I am gathering experiences and building my portfolio and my network. And it has not ended yet but I am definitely certain that it is going to be a happy ending.

Who?

A brief introduction should be appropriate. Active Samsung Members users for West Africa should be familiar with the name Chijioke. I have been the Samsung Members manager for West Africa for about three years now. In this introduction I do not intend to showoff but to let you know that against all odds, no matter how insurmountable they may seem, you can achieve anything you set your heart to achieve.

Programming Background

Prior to 2017, I had no programming experience but graphics design and coding have always been my desire. In the last quarter of 2017, I decided to pursue this passion and I came across an application to Andela Fellowship program. I applied and went through the home study with so much dedication and it was also timely as my leave started few days into the study, with the deadline to submission of the test very close because my application was pretty late. At the end, I developed phobia for coding because I was able to attempt only the theoretical questions. The coding challenges made it look like I did not study at all. So I never wanted to have anything to do with coding again. I decided to focus squarely on graphics design. In fact I regretted the journey as a waste of my precious time.

Recovery

Early 2018, I had recovered from the traumatic experience. I decided to see what’s up with Andela so I discovered the Andela Learning Community. I applied and I was put on the waiting list. Meanwhile, I determined to teach myself coding as much as I could. I put a stop to every other business I engage in. I wanted to have more time dedicated to coding. I came across many learning resources; freecode camp, codecademy, fullstack academy, coursera, edX, and I had a problem with sticking to just one of them. But when I found out about Udacity, I knew that this is it. Udacity just suited my learning style so I Stuck with Udacity.

Discovery

Now with the style of presentation on Udacity, I knew it was just a matter of time. I started the free courses hoping that someday I would be able to afford the fee for the Nanodegree program. I wanted to learn JavaScript but HTML and CSS were requisites so I started with HTML. It was not long when I got a message from Andela Learning Community to apply for a Front End Web Development or Android Development program. I applied for the Front End track as a beginner. Not long afterwards I got another message, I was one of the over 16,000 recipients of the Google Africa Challenge Scholarship. I was so excited and shared the news on social media according to the instructions.

Don’t be too excited

My excitement continued. I was happy with the online community on slack, the offline meetups was something to always look forward to. But it was not long before I realised that even the beginner track was too advanced for me when I got to Javascript especially jQuery. Maybe I was a very slow learner but I continued. With much support from my colleagues and mentors, both on the online slack community and offline meetups, I was able to complete the final Pixel Art Maker project.

The end does not justify the means

I had put in my best, giving the challenge everything I could but I knew there were thousands of fellows in the program that were more knowledgeable and experienced than I was when it comes down to JavaScript so I was just asking God for a miracle because I knew I was not among the top 500. But I consoled myself that I had learnt a lot already in the challenge so even if I don’t get the scholarship, the journey was worth the while. I felt I had gone through the process the best way I could so the outcome does not matter. But deep down I was praying to God for a miracle.

I believe in miracles

Finally my brethren, I made it. I could not believe it. Top 500 learners out of 16,000+ in Africa? It was like a dream. That morning, tears rolled down my cheeks. I was just transfixed on my seat in the office. And when I became conscious of my environment again and realized it was not a dream, I shared the news first with my family. I also got snacks for my colleagues in the office because for me this was a dream come through.

Time to Get back to work.

I knew I struggled in the challenge so I ve got extra work to do if I was going to make a meaning of the Nanodegree scholarship. I had to go back to the courses learnt in the challenge to try master some concepts as much as I could. This took about three weeks before I started the Nanodegree curriculum. I had to dedicate more time, three hours every day after work. My job by nature was very tedious so I was always exhausted by close of business and I would have to rest a bit before resuming the online lectures on Udacity. I had to deal with the risk of late night movement. Once I was attacked by hoodlums with a bike. I narrowly escaped that night and I changed my route of going home. On weekends, sometimes I had to deal with power outtages. Sometimes I would go to a business center and pay them just to use their electric power. On one occasion, I had to fuel the Generator set of a business center.

I had to give up.

We had seven projects to complete the Nanodegree program. With two months gone I was still struggling with the second project. The second project, Matching Card Game gave me the worst frustration of my life. From 10pm one Saturday night to 5am Sunday morning, I was just on a spot. I felt like smashing my laptop. It was then I knew that there was no way I could make it because I expected the remaining projects to be tougher. If I m still struggling with the second project with two months gone, then I would never be able to complete the remaining five with two months to go. So that morning I was left with no option but to quit. So I gave up that morning because I had stretched myself to my limit.

New Limits

Here is what I found out especially with coding. Whenever you stretch yourself to a limit, you have just created a new limit. I had to admit that going through the program and not getting the certificate was not a loss. The only way I could lose would be to quit the program. So I determined to continue. Long story short, I was able to meet up with all the projects’ requirements before the term end date and I got my Nanodegree certificate of completion for the Front End Web Development.

So far not so good

I had a lot of backlogs in different areas of my life because I had literally abandoned everything else. So immediately after the Nanodegree program, I had to take a break to attend to the things I had abandoned. I resumed learning fully this year, 2019 but my learning curve is being hindered time wise, especially because of my current job as the Samsung members manager and doubling as the level 2 technical customer care specialist for Samsung Mobile phones at the Samsung contact center for West Africa. I ve been trying hard to combine learning with my current job as much as I can, trying to get a firm grip of semantic HTML and CSS, having them at my finger tip and I m making progress and moving on to mastering JavaScript. Some of my postgraduate learning journeys can be found at https://github.com/wisestme .

Way Forward

To accelerate my learning curve, I ve been applying to companies involved in web development or programming for an internship role so that I can learn as I work. I am yet to get any but I know its coming.

Appreciation

I thank my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ for the gift of life, for grace and favour. Thank you Google for the scholarships on Udacity and Pluralsight,(with more surprises to come hopefully. winks) what a privilege it has been. Thank you Andela for the initaitives, I sincerely appreciate you. To my mentors, facilitators, program managers, you guys are the best, always there for us despite your obvious busy schedule. To my fellow learners, thanks for your support and inspiration.

Summary

No matter your background, predisposition, its never late to start something new and there is always a way for you to make a way to accomplish anything you set your heart after. Just don’t stop moving forward.

I really wish I knew how or where to start this story. Not just because writing is an art I have never attempted but the journey has also been a long one coming. Probably, it would be appropriate to start by saying a very big “THANK YOU” to Google, Udacity and Andela for such a wonderful opportunity into the Google Africa Scholarship Challenge. It was quite challenging. Next I would like to congratulate everyone that took up the challenge because we are all winners with or without the phase 2 of the scholarship. At least for the beginners’ tracks. With the skills we acquired, there would be no limits.

Like I already said, it was quite challenging for me working full time, 8.00AM to 5.00PM, Mondays through Fridays. I had to determine how to proceed with a workable schedule. I was able to come up with studying for three hours every day after work except on Wednesdays when I go to church from work. And in the evenings of Saturdays and Sundays, I tried to put in as much time as possible.

Now I am glad I took up the challenge because it has helped to improve my life in many ways. Not only has it improved my coding abilities but it has helped me improve on how I interact with others. For instance I am now moving away from the tendency of being selfish with knowledge and wanting to do everything by myself, needing and asking for no assistance. What I consider the most important lesson, even though it was difficult for me to comprehend at the start of the challenge, was how on earth am I supposed to be providing assistance to someone whom we are in a competition for same limited prize? As in help someone make it through in a journey to get an award I am not sure of getting myself? But I eventually understood the concept of healthy competition, how without collaboration, coding would be so backwards and with collaboration, we will all be better for it eventually.

This would be an unfair write up if I do not acknowledge the obvious that I am not better than those who were not selected for the phase 2 of the scholarship (Yes I was selected for it) because I met on our communities (online and offline) other learners whom I knew were far ahead of me as far as coding is concerned. So for me, being selected for the Nanodegree program is an opportunity and a privilege for which I am grateful to the organizers and my fellow learners for all the support.

Finally, thank you Jesus…..