My internship with Little Drop Edu Coding Bootcamp (LD) has been both rewarding and reassuring. With this piece, you are sure of a convincing narrative of events LD have been unleashing on its participants since its inception.
I started off with my ambition into Programming in September, 2019. This was on freeCodeCamp platform during a period when the urge of supporting my financial situation with yet another source of income became hightened. As it were, the path is yielding positively and it is becoming a dependable career change option for me from my initial teaching line. With it I aim to establish myself very soon as a viable Frontend Developer with a blend in UIUX; a dream that is becoming a reality gradually before every of my well-wishers.
My engagement with LD program started in the later half of the year 2020. That was in June of that very year. While on the program, we have had emotions heightened; feelings mixed and reactions codified. Those have been positive in some instances and the opposite have been recorded at some other times. Many participants have been excelling and many have had the cause to retract. Lots are gained and much more are still there to be acquired just as a slogan I stumbled over in a write up on medium that proposes and encourages:
"Don't stop learning!"
Though my exposure with freeCodeCamp was my first shot at Programming, I could not claim even a certification all alone with my Self-Thought approach there till I joined LD. My second internship with LD which commenced in June this year (2021) saw me excelling exceptionally; moving from one level to the other; from LD Mobile Devt5 Phase 1 to LD Bootcamp Phase 2 and finally to LD Bootcamp Phase 3. During these phases I clinched 5 consecutive certifications from freeCodeCamp courtesy of a tweaking from Mentor Fagbenle, Aminat Oyenike who is also the Programme Administrator of LD (ldbootcamp.com.ng).
At the moment with Phase 3 on the Frontend Web/Mobile Application path, I am on with my final project on the path. This is an e-commerce website I have been saddled with having bagged the required certifications from freeCodeCamp.org. The outcome of the project is expected to display functionality of security consciousness, cool responsive eye-catching platform and user-friendly interfaces at a glance by every of its beholders among its hosts of deliverables and requirements.
The Internship at LD provides participants with options of courses with Data Science Path (Python/Machine Learning) just as it is doing with my path of Mobile/Web Application (JavaScript/React). This I have to come to realise is to aid our better understanding and deeper comprehension at the end of the day. Ultimately this will eventually make us icons on our chosen path.
To put the knowledge acquisition on the program into practice, projects execution is a must to be carried out on every levels of the program. Though the program commenced on an in-house developed curriculum but it later settled for the tested and trusted curriculum on freeCodeCamp.org which requires execution of a number of projects at the conclusion of every stage of each participant's learning path to lead the way to the award of a certification for that stage.
Even at this, some measures have to be put in place to regulate participants' activities on the program and to ensure some level of professionalism with the exercise. Thus, Mentees are expected to share the screenshots of their learning process on a daily or weekly basis based on their levels and must meet up with whatever certification such level is tagged with to scale to the next level of the program. A defaulting Mentee is sure of being dropped after it has been realised he/she has shown no willingness to scale. Yet he or she could rejoin the program any time convenient thereafter.
Besides the Projects, another notable development with the internship at LD is the report-writing exercise for every of the participants at end of every stage scaled. In the same vein, the encouragement to write about our experience on the program has also been beneficial. This has positively impacted on my writing skills.
Additionally and recently, LD's incorporation of webinars into its program is another development that is also impactful. For the first time, I was exposed to a facilitating-role. This happened at the Internship's webinar themed Beyond the lens 1.0 where I anchored the talk on the topic: "How Best Can the Dream of Being a Useful Programmer be Achieved." This was delivered by a Savvy 'Techy' Enthusiast named KUFORIJI AbdulWaasi.
Without mincing words, this experience has been marvelously assistive. It gives room to fostering the skills of teamwork, problem-solving, communication, adaptability, flexibility, timeliness, accountability, leadership and many more among fellows participants just as it is also doing with the Mentors and the cohort as a whole. This is because a group of volunteers was set up to gather like minds to rub mind in drafting for the webinar and officiating it as well.
Surprisingly though, our Mentors and the management across board have been magnanimous in their humane approach at dealing with us. I have seen cases of Mentees gaining employment while still being an intern. A monthly data subscriptions are the lots of interns who show interest at the beginning every month. In like manners, our Mentors are have been forthcoming in attending to our plights, doing all that is there to see us succeed. Even while still on with the Internship at LD, our Mentors were instrumental with my clinching a Back-End Internship with Ustacky at the tail of last year (2020). Equally, the current internship I am running side by side with Side Hustle (SH) 4.0 is all by the magnanimity of LD. I and many of my fellow Mentees might have lost the opportunity to participate in it if they have not been opened enough to have forwarded the SH's advert to us.
On a general note, I have not for once regretted my participation as an intern with LD. Rather, my submissiveness as well as other of my likes in participating is a pointer to the fact that the youth of Nigeria are not lazy. They have potentialities waiting to be tapped; they are legends requiring the right tweaking and they are among the best things to shape the future of every nature aiming beyond the sky in her endeavours to serve humanity in this dynamic world of technological advancement along with its interdependence outlook.
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