MY ANDELA APPLICATION(part Two)
This is the second part of the unknown series of my Andela application. “Unknown” is not the title, don’t look it up. It is a way of saying “I don’t know how many times it’s going to be” series. Not cool, is it?
This time I passed the tests as I had seen them before, though there were some new questions, I was relaxed and finished particularly the second test in a reasonable time. Then came the email I have never seen before in the process and it read “Congratulations, you made it !!!”. This meant I was off to the interviews and all the directions to Andela offices were in there. Things were starting to get real on something I registered for as usual and if all that I had registered for reached this far, I would be rich.
I told my brothers and they insisted on coming with me, they can get overprotective sometimes. I went with one and none of us had been to Kamwokya before. We got lost, they are two ways, we were supposed to go left, we headed right and we walked until we saw a petrol station we had passed when we were coming.
Fast forward to us standing in front of this big flat, forget the getting lost, by then my heart was pounding. We walked in and at the reception, we had to sign in and get tags, security is tight. I checked in and waited on the second floor as told in the email. A guy who works there came and saw me sweat, he asked if I was there for the interview. He told me that I just have be like am talking to a friend, nothing to worry about. Did it calm me down? I don’t think so.
When it came time for the interview and I was in front of this guy and a lady in a glass partitioned office, I started to speak and words just didn’t come out clearly because I was very nervous.
The lady asked if the guy is the one making me scared. “No, no, no. Am, kinda shy but, let’s do this”, I replied. I composed myself and started telling my story. I could tell they were surprised because even I can’t believe myself when I look in the mirror. Now, don’t think am going to tell you about my life or what I said in the interview here, no way. Just know whatever I said got me another golden email congratulating me for passing the interview and I was like “Yes. I passed it, boot camp is ten days away.”.
Eight days down the line at about twelve noon, a phone rings, picking it up, it was from a person named David Ssali. He says he’s the Andela Learning Facilitator calling from obviously Andela. He asks if I saw the email invitation to the boot camp,”Yes.”,I reply. He asks if I saw the Andela Developer Challenges (ADC) which were sent to me, he asks if I had already joined Slack, he asks if I had started working on the challenges as am thinking, “What’s going on ?”. I tell him am going to check my email and start working on them. “But you’re a bit slow, try to put in some agency so that you don’t lag behind.”,he says. “Are you coming to the open Saturday ?”,he asks. “Y..es.”,I reply thinking, “What is open Saturday ?”.
I check my inbox, don’t see the emails. Checking spam label, I find all the emails of what he was talking about and they were sent six days ago. Tell you what, I started working on everything but I was literally out of my mind first week long of the boot camp. I had no time to clearly interpret the ADC guidelines and boom. I got cut off. I applied again immediately so catch me in the next episode as I try to crack the two weeks of the boot camp.
“THESE BRUISES ARE MADE FOR BETTER CONVERSATION.” — Lule Herman
