Looking back at my journey over the past year, I am thrilled at how far I have come.

My name is Faith Ikhidero, I'm a Software Developer and this is my story...

Before My Tech Journey

I am a graduate of English and Literary Studies with a career tilted towards Sales and Marketing for several years, until I made a career shift over a year ago. Just like many others, the coronavirus pandemic opened my eyes to a new reality and gave me some time to think about remaining relevant in the job market in the midst of this new reality. I made some research about the tech industry and decided to give it a push.

Hello Newbie!!!

In March 2021, I joined Ingressive for Good for a free program, wrote my first Hello World! and I coudn't be more excited. Seeing that I could write something on a code editor and see it display on my browser gave me bubbles in my stomach and I was jumping around the house like someone who won a gold medal. Some days later, I ran into an ad that was opened to learners from all backgrounds to start their software engineering journey from the foundations of Computer Science so I decided to put in my application and left Ingressive for Good at that point to focus on getting into the ALX 12 months Software Engineering program. Getting into ALX was a dream come true for me. I was among the few who scaled through the three rigorous stages of the application and got accepted into the program. This will be the main focus of my journey part 2.

As I transitioned into tech, more times than I could count, the fear of whether I had made a wrong decision was my new reality as I struggled to understand what I was doing. At that point, I was not only a code newbie, I was also a first time mom, learning to code with my 5 months old baby. The struggle was real and I began to doubt my ability to thrive in this new path I had chosen. Some days were good, other days, not so much, and even after giving myself a healthy dose of motivation sometimes, it just wasn't enough.

to be continued...