My name is Emem Jonah Ekpe before now I was just a girl studying Computer Science.
It all started with a valuable amount of happiness being one of the awesome people to have been given scholarship by Andela to learn Android. At that time, my industrial training was about to come to an end. ‘If only this opportunity came earlier’, I thought.
Then the ASUU strike came, my prayer must have been answered as this would enable me enough time to study the Udacity courses.
When I started watching the tutorials online, it was like seeing a movie that is interesting as I could only see the preview of my XML codes I ran.
While learning, my major hold back was the fact that I did not have an Android phone to run my apps also my system was not good enough to run an emulator, it was sad but still this didn’t stop my learning.
Abruptly, ASUU strike was called off which led to the resumption of school activities. Another discouraging factor had just step in though I never relented as ‘No pain no gain’ was my watch word.
Then came the New Year Challenge. How was I supposed to complete the challenge in such a time frame?, where do I get a phone to test every minute update of my codes? The fear of not being certified at the end of this struggle I had started crept in.
Using different phones to run my apps anytime I stumbled upon one made me realised I had to build for different versions of phone, that was hard work indeed but with the success of the New Year Challenge , I could now breathe freely.
As I could recall during that time, among my departmental courses was this very domineering course ‘CSC 514’ titled Computer Programing. Domineering because a whole new language ‘Python’ was introduced. From the name Python, it sounded serious. The learning of Python was inevitable because I was destined to meet it in the exam’s hall.
Surprisingly, Python and I became friends, it was something most of my colleagues had difficulties in. The reason was that Andela simplified the learning process for me earlier on from the New Year Challenge that was given. I could declare and initialize variables, print out results and so on, with this python was not all that different because I was familiar with such technical terms already. Explaining to my colleagues was no problem at all, there and then I became relevant as the semester eventually ended.
The persistent encouragement from my mentor gave me the urge to begin the Udacity courses all over again as though to understand the rudiment in order to take on the Climb challenge as this was another dimension of programing for me. Getting to know Figma which I used to create mock-up designs was another form of learning. An Interesting platform I am now convenient with anytime. Designing with Figma and implementing it in Android studio was a challenge I had to overcome. The application function of Take a Climb Challenge were outstanding, but in order for me to be too, Google became my friend and with the help I got from my mentor and facilitator, I came through.
Now, I became a cast in the movie, acted it and in my world I am the lead actor. The fearful feeling that came whenever I set to think of life after school have been replaced with thick linen in the cloud. I belong somewhere now and for, me my journey of becoming world class developer has just began with Andela.
Being part of my success story is the Almighty God for his unending Love, Start Innovation Hub and Hanson Johnson for hosting the exciting meetups, SAM ESIDEM my mentor of whom I regard in high esteem for being there, Damilola Omoyiwola my facilitator ever there to put us on the right track, my parents for providing me with the laptop, Patience Jonah my sister who encouraged me to finish what I started, my fellow awesome learners, finally Andela for providing such opportunity and making me matter.
Here is my tic tac toe app https://github.com/Emiqueena/ALCTictactoe/raw/master/app-debug.apk
