My Journey to Becoming a Techie

In this modern age, it is essential for one to acquire a skill, especially as the economy continues to worsen and surviving becomes increasingly difficult. Aside from being able to make a living out of it, acquiring a skill fosters personal growth. A person with a skill can adapt to changes in the environment more quickly than one without any skills. Acquiring a skill also provides job security. With the rapid growth and development of artificial intelligence, traditional jobs are at risk of being replaced. Having a skill ensures that even if a person is sacked today, they can still make a living with the skills they have already acquired.

There are many skills that individuals can acquire, but acquiring a high-income skill, such as a technological skill, offers greater benefits. That is why I have decided to embark on a tech journey to acquire a tech skill "frontend web development."

Some friends on Hive have noticed that I have not been very active lately and have been coming to my DMs to ask why. The reason is that I am on a journey to become a techie. One of my brother's coursemate mentioned to him that their tech academy is running a scholarship for fifty individuals within the age range of 18 to 30 years to acquire any tech skill of their choice. This was a huge opportunity that I couldn't afford to miss.

Firstly, acquiring a high-demand skill such as frontend web development costs nothing less than three hundred thousand naira.

Secondly, the academy running the scholarship is one of the best in town, if not the best. So, this is the best academy offering me a scholarship to acquire any tech skill of my choice, with the only requirements being to be between 18-30, own a good laptop, and be available for all classes. Everything else will be provided for me.

Doesn't it sound too good to be true? It would be foolish to miss such a life-changing opportunity considering that I fit all the requirements. When my brother suggested I apply for the scholarship, I didn't hesitate, knowing that there are millions of people out there competing for the same scholarship. It was a matter of letting the best people win. Luckily, I was one of the best people who won the scholarship.

Out of the 345 people that applied, 70 of us were shortlisted and asked to come to the academy for an interview. We were also asked to bring our laptops so they could check if they were suitable for learning. After the interview and screening, we were asked to wait for an email stating whether we qualified for the scholarship. Three days after the interview, I hadn't received an email. On the fourth day, nothing. On the fifth day, still nothing. I had already lost hope of qualifying when I received an email stating that I had qualified for the scholarship and was to report to the academy for onboarding. To say I was excited would be an understatement. I was crazily, madly happy and couldn't contain my excitement. I kept shouting and running around. I mean, who wouldn't do so after receiving a life-changing opportunity on a platter of gold?

I reported to the academy two Fridays ago, for onboarding and freshers drilling, after which we were grouped according to our selected tracks for installations. My track is frontend web development, so we were to install a code editor known as Visual Studio Code, a developer platform known as GitHub for managing and sharing code, and a cloud-based team communication platform known as Slack for our lessons, which will run three times a week: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Lessons officially resumed on Monday, last week where we learned the basics of frontend web development, such as what a frontend is, a website, a web page, and a browser, and how they are related to frontend web development. We also learned the basic programming language for web development, which is Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Initially, I thought HTML just involved tags, but after the class, I realized there was more to it. We also have the HTML element, characterized by an open tag, content, and a closing tag. Tags are labels that describe the function of an element, and there are HTML attributes that provide additional information about an element.

The following Wednesday, we continued the lessons on HTML and were able to write some basic codes for an HTML document, as well as different HTML elements, attributes, tags, their uses, and syntax. We were given an assignment to try out 10 different HTML elements other than the ones we had learned, know their functions, and their syntax.

We submitted the assignment on Friday, last week after which we continued lessons on how to structure a webpage, which wasn't much hard work.

The class ended with an assignment to try out 100 different HTML elements and tags on our own.
So far, I have been enjoying the lessons even though the assignments are quite challenging. Sometimes we have to study, learn, and practice for long hours, but as long as I am getting the hang of it, I believe it is worth the effort, time, stress and resources. So, friends, wish me luck as I strive to fully adopt the techie title within a period of one year.

Credits
cover image from freepik