Content:
1.0. How it all started;
2.0. Prefellowship at TIIDELAB
3.0. Fellowship at TIIDELAB
4.0. My experience in the 6th Month in Tiidelab
5.0. DevCAREER
6.0. Graduation
7.0. CONCLUSION
1.0 How it all Started
That dull sensation of mistrust and lack of faith. The suffering that comes from looking back on your life and wondering how you managed to escape unharmed. the feeling of low self-worth and the preoccupation that comes with the thought of “WHAT NEXT?” After the completion of a phase.
Losing yourself in appropriate apprehension of the unknown and spending a great deal of time considering what to do with your life, were the constant thoughts in my head when the year started.
I had the choice of changing my career to tech to improve my skill set and make money. I enjoyed seeing how a few lines of code could create a stunning website and how further lines of code could result in interactions on the web browser. Interesting, huh?
I was excited to see that I could start typing some lines of text and special characters and that the browser would start to display some functionalities. Then I decided I wanted to be a front-end developer, and it all started with learning HTML and CSS. I made mistakes and attempted to figure out why they happened so I wouldn’t repeat them and could also save time.
I worked on these fundamentals for months which enabled me to build a few static websites, which were essentially landing pages.
Here are some of the initial projects I worked on:
1. FoodMart https://offiong-foodmart.netlify.app/
2. Relish Cuisine; https://relish-cuisine.netlify.app/
3. Frontend Mentor project on a bank’s landing page. https://github.com/JoyOffiong/Easybank
2.0. Pre-fellowship at TIIDElab
I joined Twitter after being urged to do so during my practice sessions, and it was there that I met my first tech friend.
After a few months of studying, I learned about Tiidelab, a 6-month internship that began with a 6-week prep fellowship.
I signed up for the pre-fellowship, and I performed poorly on the assessment test. I contacted the program coordinator Mr. Shamsudeen Aderoju and I told him about my poor performance on the test. That day, I learned a valuable lesson: you never can tell what reaching out might do for you. Perhaps, he saw how passionate I was to be in the pre-fellowship to learn and grow, then he gave me an opportunity to participate in the pre-fellowship, and I pledged to give it my best.
We took extensive classes in HTML5, CSS3, and GIT throughout the six weeks of the program. We were a team of five, and each team was assigned a mentor. Haneefat Owuri served as my mentor at the time, and my team was developing an application for ordering food.
In my team of 10, there was a UI designer who created the project’s UI. We were all given pages to build, and I worked on the orders page where customers can view more details about a dish by clicking on its name. The app’s MVP may be found at this URL: https://tiide-cuisine.netlify.app/
Our mentors included Mr. Adeyemi Samuel, Miss Haneefat Owuri, Mr. Chris Madufor, and Miss Opeyemi.
I built my first portfolio and the website for the Royal Oak hotel within those six weeks.
I applied for the main fellowship after completing the pre-fellowship; the application procedure had three steps: a CCAT test, a coding test, and an interview. I aced all three levels of screening and was accepted into the Fellowship.
3.0 TIIDELAB FELLOWSHIP -the highlight of my 2022
My pleasure upon being accepted into Tiidelab reached no bounds; it was one of the best days of 2022. I began to complete all outstanding work and get ready to launch the internship.
On June 8th, we had our onboarding session, where 62 fellows were successfully onboarded. During this session, we were introduced to our technical support team and coaches. It was not a pleasant way to begin because I was out for my NYSC clearance (I was still serving as a youth corper at the time) and was stuck in traffic, so I had to look for a spot to sit and listen and network, still stole away all of my joy. But then I went around a block and found a nice place to stay.
We learned so much over the course of 6 months, and I will give a summary of everything we did within the 5 months, as much as I can remember, as I have written well-detailed articles on how each month was for me. Here, I’ll give more details about the 6th month as well.
We were grouped into 6 teams, I was a member of the Team Data Pirates.
We were given different projects to build, my team was assigned a questions and answers platform
My team started work asap and we had a name for the project — CODEASK
The team was spilt into two sub-teams, the Ui team, and the implementation team
I joined the UI team and we started working on the User interface and experience.
we brushed through HTML and CSS. During this period, I rebuilt my portfolio with these technologies and deployed it on netlify. Here is a link to my current portfolio: offiongjoy.netlify.app
I was diagnosed with cornea ulcer, a few days into our UI designs and had to stay offscreen for two weeks
As team projects were ongoing, we dived into JavaScript.
We also had a series of guest speaker sessions and soft skills classes. The soft skills classes were facilitated by Mr. Shams
The team project progressed and in the 4th Month, we moved to learn React.js for the frontend stack and Node.js for the backend.
We converted all the pages developed with HTML, CSS, and javascript to react.js and the backend guys started cooking the endpoints for consumption
We started consuming APIS towards the end of the 5th month and preparing to get the project to MVP
I started out writing, by writing my monthly articles
Additionally, on July 7th, when I was supposed to defend my portfolio project, I had my passing out parade and had to travel to Lafia. And since there were many changes that needed to be made to other people’s work and not enough time for mine, I could not defend my project.
4.0 My experience in the 6th Month in Tiidelab:
The sixth month was jam-packed with events and last-minute planning for our cohort’s internship to end. We attended a workshop on how to present yourself for interviews and job openings.
we had a community development service project where I served as a member of the planning committee. We visited an IDP camp in Abuja and we gifted out food item, clothing, and drugs to the dweller of the IDP camp. It was a lifelong experience for me and I learned sympathy and empathy for the less privileged.
We also had our MVP ready and were able to put many finishing touches to CODEASK.
We had to make sure we worked hard on our projects to have a safe landing as graduation ceremony preparations became intense.
5.0 DEVCAREER
This is another boot camp I applied for when I applied for Tiidelab, hoping that if I didn’t get into Tiidelab, I would definitely nest the Devcareer bootcamp. Fortunately for me, I was accepted into both. Devcareer’s internship began in September, and they admitted 100 people. We were given our laptops, shown around the co-working space we would be using for the duration of the boot camp- ventures Park, Abuja, and then we were off. It was enjoyable because we were ten tech sis in that hub, and we all learned from one another. Devareer divided the 100 devcareer students into groups covering four stacks -frontend, backend, ui/ux design, and cloud computing. and each stack had teams. My team, team two, took on a couple of projects and we all worked together on them).
Additionally, I picked up some new information on using SCSS, BEM, and codacy to assess the quality of my code. In addition to this, each of us worked on a few other projects individually. Currently, we are developing a strong app for NFT transactions, and we are employing next.js, typescript, and styled-components.
Aside from these, I’ve had to network and make friends with some really good techies, which has expanded my network.
6.0 GRADUATION
This is a day that will live on in my memory for the rest of my life. I received an award for volunteering at the CDS project, an award for being an outstanding team member, and I was officially certified as a junior software developer on this day. My team ended up being the best team in the cohort, and my team had the best-graduating student. Working with this group for the past six months has made me appreciate teamwork even more, and I definitely work better in groups.
7.0 CONCLUSION
2022 was a bumper year for me and one I will always remember. I lived and accomplished more. This post wouldn’t be complete without mentioning a few people in particular, including my parents, my uncle- Mr. Edet and his family, Chris Madufor, Edet Effiong, Deborah Sunday, Timkere Otu, Mr. Shamsudeen Aderoju, and Abraham Solabi. These persons have played significant roles in my development in 2022. Additionally, I’ll always be thankful to Tiidelab for the chance to develop self-reliance and Devcareer for the laptop and hub provided for usage throughout the internship; these items were crucial to my progress over the last year.
In order to accomplish all the goals I have listed for myself for 2023, I will be more deliberate about my goals, pray more earnestly, and work harder. I know that this year will rank among my best years and that I’ll do much more. InshaAllah, I want to reflect on this post on the last day of 2023 and feel proud of myself.
Happy New Year!!