The ‘Genesys’ of my Tech Journey
Puns and money. Those were the genesis of my interest in tech. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved figures of speech and especially had a soft spot for puns so when I found people who happened to live it with their dev memes and wittiness, I wanted to identify myself with them. But beyond that, I wanted to earn money while in school, and software developers seemed to be making a lot of dough. So I decided to go into front-end development as my brother was into it at the time. Few tech events and plenty of tech jargon I understood nothing about later, I had downloaded Sololearn an applied for the Andela 4.0 scholarship, got into the Web development track and all I could think was ‘I am on my way to being independent’.
IMPOSTOR!
I was part of a tech community now, my roomies would always call me Nwanyi Roar Hub and boy did it feel nice to hear😊. I spent many Saturdays at the hub attending our tech events and returning with cute stickers to cover my laptop with. They felt to me like the techie’s flag so I made sure to collect them in their numbers but when I came around the said techies and event facilitators, all my mind could scream was “IMPOSTOR”😨. I hated feeling so insecure that I was sure to consciously go for hangouts the community tried to have outside of the tech space to remember to live with the people they were building solutions for, in front of their PCs and not behind them. I was getting over my impostor syndrome by getting to know them first as people, then as techies but my lack of interest in web development grew geometrically.
From Genesis to Genesys
My knowledge of my tech track was in the same spot for months as I had no desire whatsoever to deep learn it, still, I had begun to change- I understood tech terms, and was slowly getting very much interested in the tech space and the mind-blowing things they had to offer, techies looked very much like regular humans to me who also fought with bugs (who would’ve thought). Then, my brother, Chibuokem Jerry got into Learnable’19 and all I heard was Genesys. I decided to stalk them🙈 on social media and voila they were “A people-centered community focused on growing talent-”. The people-centered phrase struck me as peculiar as everyone knows how much of an expectation vs reality businesses give off in this part of town, however, his excitement and testimonies about his experience seemed to resonate the fact that they did live their mantra. I wanted to be a part of this in any way I could so when the opportunity presented itself in the form of using their workspace by December, I grabbed at it, paid, and utilized The Agora for a month.
Learnable’20 to the Rescue
Months after I left The Agora and went back to school, the experience was still very much missed that I decided to apply for their virtual internship as I wasn’t sure I’d be allowed to intern at a tech hub by my department (Food Science and Technology) come next year during the six months required of 400 level students in the department. I had before then taken time to redefine my reasons for being in tech and going for a track that I could enjoy learning and had gone into UI/UX designs so when applying for Learnable’20, I put in Product design as, my learning track and got in. I was so excited as now, I wouldn’t be a visitor but a part of them, Genesys. To simply identify with them and learn from them feels like making it into a life-changing wrinkle in time. With the interactions, I’ve had with them before now, and at the induction, certainly, I won’t just be learning product design but growing into a better version of myself. As humans are emotional beings, being a part of such a community will create more productive people in society.
I’ve gone from clueless to curious about the tech space, quit front-end development, and changed the motive of my interest in tech within the past year, which certainly helped me settle for the learning track I belong to now. I met new people, the likes of Victor Onuoha Martins, Njoku Godson, Chisom Nwokwu, Lydia Ezeakor, Nwagba Okechukwu, Chiziaruhoma Ogbonda and a lot more amazing techies and saw but a glimpse of life from a different lens than I was used to. I look forward to more of those in the future, so cheers🥂, to all the Interns who made it into Learnable’20 and their even better selves, come December; to people-centeredness.
