2022: The One With The Green Squares

That sounds weird and probably unbelievable, right? But it's true. Finding one word to summarise 2022 would be — tough. I worked extremely hard because high school was no longer an excuse, neither were exams nor an imaginary husband and kids. Besides, it was actually a goal to try to be consistent the whole year. And I guess I did or at least tried. But there was more to the year than just streaks...

~ the one where I contributed to open source

I made meaningful open-source contributions to organizations like Chimoney, Ingressive4Good, GenZechies along others. Something stood out throughout these contributions — I barely had previous knowledge of the technologies they used. For Chimoney, I put my writing skills to use and proposed a change of their copy for the chispend.com website. I also made a presentation video of their services, which I cannot recall ever doing before. For GenZTechies, I learnt about TailwindCSS and all the magic it can perform. We were working on a videoconferencing platform for the community, and we used Vue.js, TailwindCSS and the Jitsi API. While contributing to I4G's project, I learnt to use React. It was definitely hard because the project was going a little fast-paced and I could barely stop to take tutorials. I was more of reading code written by others and trying to replicate it after understanding. What eased the situation was the fact that I started contributing to other react projects to speed up the learning process.

~ the one where I became an HNG finalist

Ah, yes. This feat. Very remarkable. You're wondering why? Well, the thing is... I never imagined myself making it to the finals. I mean... this is HNG... where all forms of 'shege' can be found and cannot completely be avoided. When signing up I was giving myself and some friends subtle disclaimers that I'd drop out at stage 2 because I felt wouldn't make it through, so they won't be surprised when I do drop out due to slacking. This particular friend kept saying he'd see me at the finals and I kept wondering what they were seeing in me that I wasn't. Then came stage 3... then 4... then 5... then 6... then got double promoted to 8, then 9... then 10... then came presentation day and after < 10 minutes of my team's project presentation I received an invitation to the finalist channel. Every time I got promoted to the next stage I'd always be surprised and extremely happy because I kept going farther in the program beyond personal expectations. I ended up learning and collaborating on real-life projects with React, as well as working with new people, and gained work experience while working on a product.

In summary, I

• kept a 365-day streak on GitHub (currently 400 days and counting)

• made tangible contributions to a couple of open-source projects and organizations

• attended my first GDG Event, Google DevFest Lagos, and went on to volunteer at another GDG Event, Google DevFest Ojo/Festac

• was picked as one of 100 in 7k+ applicants for a 3months internship and got a laptop

• made it to the finals of HNGi9 (an intense 8-week fast-paced internship, with vibes of Squid Game)

• got my first frontend gig 🥺

Lessons?

• expect disappointment, never be disappointed (yeah I stole it from spiderman, bite me)

  you're going to make plans. and they're going to fail. big time. but then that doesn't mean you're tossing them away and not trying again, that'll be you attempting to be a c-. I trust you're not... or are you?

• appreciate the little wins

  believe me, it's very easy to get downhearted and discouraged when you see other people probably the same age/peer group doing more stuff than you or being where you feel you're supposed to be. but the moment you realise that you're doing a lot of great stuff at your own pace, you've seen the light

• progress isn't linear (credits to user67236498276947 on TikTok for this one)

  you'll learn things. and unlearn. and relearn. and quite honestly, this pattern is known to help humans retain more knowledge. so try not to compare yourself to people that you started before, or who earn more than you.

I'm looking forward to doing more amazing things in future... meeting new people, learning new tech and going places. Veamos cómo va (that's Spanish for let's see how it goes)

I'm preparing an article about my experience during my 3-month internship at devcareers, so I guess I'll see you there?