So I decided to jump on this Year in Review thingy after a long battle of resisting the urge.
I believe one major source of motivation is reviewing one’s journey, the bumps on the road, milestones achieved, and deriving passion to keep pushing.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. - Steve Jobs
2021 has been a rollercoaster year for me, in terms of career, academics, and life itself in general.
I graduated from the University of Benin, don’t ask for my CGPA sha (me sef nor know), I saw my name on the list of those that have been freed from the shackles of Computer Science department, that’s was how I knew I had graduated, it’s quite unfortunate btw, I had high hopes in 100L then, coming from a Polytechnic (that’s a story for another day abeg).
My final year in school was less boring compared to the other years (maybe it was due to the fact I’d be getting out soon, hehe), I interacted more with people, which was weird, yea it was tbh, I was a loner (I still am sha), I had a close group of people I rolled with in school and never thought of adding more or even reshuffling because I saw no reason to btw.
There were a lot of activities in school as an FYB now, all that jazz you get, Lol. I combined school with work, yea forgot to mention, I’m a software engineer more on the backend side of things, although I’m looking towards the blockchain sphere now, coz ehhrrm why not? Lol, na there money dey now shey?. Asides that, I’m a big believer in Web3 (Decentralized Internet), I am quite sure it’s the future. (No be evangelism this article be abeg, you can feed your curious mind on what Web3 is all about and all the crazy hype around it).
I juggled school with work, don’t ask me which suffered for which, I sha know I pushed both to the best of my abilities, although I was more biased to the one that protected me from the harsh realities of Sapa, ehn ehn now. I played with cryptocurrency, although I wasn’t new to the space.
This article is getting too long, let me summarize quickly, I graduated from school, didn’t celebrate because it wasn’t a Win to me, getting out of bondage is not necessarily a win IMO, it’s surviving and I’m not a fan of surviving, I wanna Live, yes Life should be Lived in my books not survived.
Career-wise, hmmmm, it was something else, for disclosure, I stutter (stammer), I don’t know if I’m a conc. Stutterer, I see myself as one depending on the situation, most especially job interviews, my resilience was tested, being at a disadvantage because of something you have no control over in some sense. There was a job I was in the process of getting then, the engineering manager told me that, concerning my competence, there is no issue, my implementation mirrored their structure which he was very surprised, he couldn’t believe it until I showed him another project I worked on. He was concerned about the stutter because he thought I might not be able to get on well with the team, and yea during the final interview, I blew it hehe, stuttering got the best of me, found it hard to put together strings of meaningful sounds, uncontrolled anxiety, confidence, and composure disappeared just like in other interviews but this was terrible. As you can imagine, I got the L, it wasn’t the first time btw, I shook it off and got back on my feet.
On to the Win (W) yea, after taking a couple of Ls mostly because of stuttering, I got a backend software engineering position at Interswitch, I did not expect to get in tbh, they were more interested in communication over how I communicated, it relieved me of anxiety and I was able to get through the interview stages with ease. I have been with the team for a couple of months now, and yea it’s been fun. I’m in a team of brilliant minds, getting to work with new tools and learning to work with real-world infrastructures powering millions of usage, it’s a whole new adventure for me and I’m enjoying it.
Remembered some days, after receiving Ls, I will start praying (speaking in tongues) to increase the joy in me, since I’m a carrier of God’s presence and there is fullness of joy in His presence, then I have joy within. Glory!!
To my number one supporter, my Mum has been there, this article can’t contain my appreciation towards her but I pray He who gives Life shall reward her with a long one, it can only get better for sure.
I’m a work in progress and I appreciate the impact people around me have made in my life, to my brothers while I was in school David, Emmanuel, Samuel, and others (make the others no vex abeg, una sef try), friends, I can’t end this article without including Asia Blessing (Asher), hehe, I thank God for her.
There are a lot of things to work on next year, I’m sure that by being intentional, I can only improve.
You are here, well thanks for coming and reading through my ted talk hehe, it means a lot to me, You are a champ. Thank you.
Thanks 2021 for the lessons, Cheers to us, Cheers to the new year, Cheers to 2022.