Becoming a Software Developer: Riding on the back of Setbacks
A wise man once said that no great deed has ever happened without great failures. Another also mentioned that it is not about failing, that it is about how we respond to the failures and inhibitions that we encounter.
These are the kind of messages you hope would creep into your mind when your build on Travis-CI has been failing for the past 48 hours, and you have less than 24 work hours to submit the final output of your task given to you. And within that 24 hours, you are expected to complete the remaining 25% of your work (that’s assuming you fixed your Travis build right away, and you are good to go)… What?
Well, it does not usually happen that way. Those messages never come most times. When you encounter obstacles, the last thing that would come to your mind is a quote by Newton or Edison or Theodore Roosevelt or Buhari (or any person that inspire you). If you are not lucky, you may never even get to hear that tiny voice of your guardian angel asking you to calm down…
I have had more than fair doses of challenges myself. Within the past few weeks of Andela Bootcamp, the challenges have been unprecedented. I have pushed myself beyond my elastic limit and have assumed a new elastic limit. I have slept for just 3 hours in a day and still have to wake up on time to catch a bus to the EPIC Tower so that I can meet up with the activities. I have missed birthdays, “important” discussions and all the what-nots that I was used to…
In one of the days, I encountered heavy rain close to Oshodi and had to use an improvised polythene raincoat to protect my laptop from a sudden and painful demise . On some occasions, I will be walking on the road and be thinking about how to configure my API error handling middlewares or be searching for UI inspiration in ordinary things that I see along the way. I do not even want to mention about the time that I was seeing JSON on people’s faces (yes, JSON!), after very long and intense hours of coding, at a stretch, just to meet up.
When the power-grid went down or the DisCo serving my area just refused to supply light, I had to squeeze out 8k (most of which came from my 15k monthly allowance) to go and buy myself an extra battery. A very fulfilling and rewarding decision for me.
There are many setbacks that I have faced, I have even forgotten most. This is life. I take every challenge as a lesson, as back-setting as it may seem. There’s always a reward attached to each. I pick them, learn from them, adapt, grow from there, and keep pushing forward. Eventually, I will get everything that I have been working for. Once there is life there is hope; another wise person once said.
