When there is a will, there is a way!

// It’s up to you …
If (you want( ) === true) {
You can( );
} else {
You can’t( );
}

I am Rasbin Rijal, originally from Nepal, the country of Himalayas. I grew up in Biratnagar, the second largest city in the eastern part of Nepal. During the time, having a computer in my community was considered as a luxury and it was regarded as a thing for only the rich. There were very few families who had computers in our community.

I come from a middle class family. My father worked in the Nepal Police Department and my mother is a housewife. They always taught me to work hard, be kind to others, use my best effort and never give up. My parents always made our education the first priority and they sent us to a good English school. It was already difficult to cover the living expenses of the family and tuition fees of me and my brother at school with one person’s income. It was almost impossible to buy a computer during the time. There were very limited number of computers in our computer lab and I got opportunity to go to computer lab only for about 30 minutes a week.

I was very active in extracurricular activities and used to read newspapers regularly. Reading newspapers everyday, I got a desire to write articles and get them published. I used to save some money from my lunch and go to cyber cafe to email my articles to the newspaper. After a couple of tries, my article got published in the local newspaper. I got excited from this and gradually I also got my articles published in the national newspapers!

I did my high school or 10+2 in management. After completing my high school, I moved to Kathmandu to do my further studies. Since I learnt a lot of stuff about new innovations and technologies being developed in newspapers, I got interested to learn computer science. I applied to study a bachelor’s degree in IT in some colleges in Kathmandu, but got rejected since my previous studies in high school were in management. Later, I came to know about BIM (Bachelors in Information Management) which is a blended degree of both management and IT and I could study MSc in IT after completing this four year degree. I got fundamental education on lot of topics from databases, operating systems, networking, human resource management, economics and more.

I started studying Bachelors in Information Management in Kantipur College of Management and Information Technology affiliated to Tribhuvan University. This college had the policy of providing free laptops to all students and this was the first time I had my own laptop. I was so excited about getting the laptop! I started reading blogs about technology. During the time, a lot of people used to write blogs in various topics. I also wanted to start my own blog but was not sure what topic should I select. I decided to write a blog on the topics of my courses which my teacher taught. It was so much fun and excitement when students started following my blog and writing comments. Sometimes, I had to customize my blog contents with tables and charts. That was when I got very interested in web design and development and started learning it.

After completing my bachelors degree, I decided to apply for Masters in IT in Finland, because of the free world-class education and got selected in University of Eastern Finland in Joensuu. The university education was more research based. Though, I worked on a few IT projects at school I found myself lacking something to apply for IT companies here in Finland. Whenever, I saw the vacancies, there were dozens of skills required and I knew only a few of them. I did not have the courage to apply so I rarely applied. Then, to fulfill this technical gap, I started taking online courses from sources like Code Academy, Solo Learn and Coursera. After a couple of weeks I already got demotivated when I got stuck in some coding problems. Sometimes, I used to think I am not smart enough to learn coding and would get frustrated . But I never gave up and kept going at it. I think that coding and working out are very similar. The more regularly you do it, the better you get at it.

There is a saying “When there is a will, there is a way”. One day, I came across a post about Integrify which mentioned that they provide training on modern web development and I applied for the programme. After joining Integrify, I got a resourceful teacher, instant support, really supportive and motivating new friends, a proper structured course and a very good learning environment. Learning coding has been very exciting after that. I am very glad to be part of this amazing community. I am very grateful to Integrify for everything. Integrify ignited a fire inside me to learn coding and I kept it burning!

I have recently started a new job as a Junior Web Developer at Integrify’s partner Digia — the first step towards my destiny. Learning software development is a never ending process as new tools and technologies are developed regularly and it is always important to be up to date with the modern tools. My aim is to become an IT Project Manager in near future. I would like to help for the easy access of education and health services in underdeveloped and developing countries through technology. I would also like to explore on start-up world, start my own company some day, but for now it is all about learning to become a great developer!