My TIIDELab Experience 3.0 (Third Month)
“TIIDELab is giving you the key to succeed; however or whenever you decide to use that key is up to you. The most important thing is to never lose that key and be able to use it when you need it.”- Pishikeni Tukura (Business development lead, TIIDELab)
You can read my first and second articles, incase you missed those.
The journey at TIIDELab continues to be an interesting and challenging experience…
With Mr. Kenny, we dived deeper into JavaScript. DOM and BOM manipulation continued and we explored more exercises such as dragging and dropping elements within the DOM. We progressed to learning the types of errors in JavaScript as well as ways to handle them using try and catch. Understanding error handling generally has helped to improve my debugging skills compared to when I had little or no understanding of them.
Afterward, we learned about synchronous and asynchronous functions. I understood how to use callbacks, promises as well as async and await functions. Learning all of these came with challenges and I had to revisit some concepts over and over to solidify my understanding; a process that can only get better with constant practice. However, I must also mention that I had days that came with the euphoria of knowing that I have understood a concept and can apply it in my code.
We also continued to improve our projects by applying concepts as we learned them.
In my last article, I remember mentioning that I had an interview scheduled with Mr. Celestine Omin and promised to share my experience. Well… I should start by mentioning that I was super nervous because I mean, I was about to talk to a very intelligent man with a robust profile and years of experience. However, to my uttermost surprise, as soon as I joined the zoom meeting he welcomed me calmly and this helped to ease my tension to some extent; not completely though because there were other people present in the room. Questions around HTML, CSS JS, and Git were asked, I answered most to the best of my ability (even though interviews can make you forget your name sometimes 😂😂)… After the interview session, I left fulfilled not because I answered every question perfectly but because I had the pleasure of meeting him and left with valuable lessons. One lesson is not just to code away but also to pay attention to learning coding paradigms and be able to effectively communicate what they do using technical terms; because you might know how to apply a concept but knowing what it’s called is very important. For instance, I was almost lost when he asked what polymorphism and closures in JS were but after my interview, I realized I was already applying these concepts in codes. Also, he asked if I had any questions for him, my question was, ”With how competitive the software development space is and so much to learn, what learning challenges did you experience coming up as a software developer and how did you overcome them ?” He responded by saying, “Learning is a continuous process, I have had to learn some concepts over ten times. If you’re learning something you don’t understand firsthand, keep going back until you do.”
Soft skills classes continue to be an integral part of our journey. This month, We learned a lot of interesting topics from Mr. Shamsudeen Aderoju, Mr. Pishikeni Tukura, and Guest Leaders.
Firstly,” Design Thinking”. A very interesting topic that taught me creative problem-solving, creative thinking, innovation, and teamwork. It was a hands-on learning experience with different activities to show how much we truly understood the class. There was an exercise where we were paired and made to draw our partners without looking at the paper thereby using our minds. I had a lot of fun during this exercise because on looking at the paper, we had hilarious images. However, we learned that it’s okay to feel uncomfortable and make a mess in the beginning, but until you start you cannot know. We also learned the five steps to design thinking, which are; empathize, define, Ideate, prototype, and test. We worked with our partners and also made prototypes of wallets using cardboard papers, sticky notes, and some other stationery for each other after going over the processes and identifying needs. Mr. Pishikeni also took his time to give us constructive feedback on our performance at the dummy interviews including the one with Mr. Celestine Omin. He commended everyone for their efforts and highlighted areas where we needed improvement. Five fellows made it to the final stage and the top three(3) were rewarded with cash prizes.
Secondly, Mr. Shamsudeen treated “Critical Thinking” as a topic, under which we learned “Critical Thinking Concepts and Application, “Bloom’s Taxonomy” which talks about the stages of learning which are ; remembering,understanding,applying, analysing, evaluating & creating and “The six(6) thinking hats(De Bono)”. At the time, the #EndSARS protest was a National concern and instead of just discussing aimlessly, we were divided into six(6) groups according to the six (6) thinking hats. Each group wore their thinking caps and together we were able to break down the problem and also proffer solutions we felt would improve the situation. My team wore the ‘Yellow Hat’ which focuses on the positive side of things and helps to maintain focus. It was a really interesting discussion.
Unfortunately, in the following week, The #EndSARS protests intensified and curfews were put in place in parts of the country to help manage the situation. Our fellows in Lagos were especially affected. Also, because our mental health is of uttermost importance to TIIDELab, we were given a few days to rest, meditate, and come back with clearer minds, happy to learn. Thankfully, things calmed down and we were able to resume activities in the following week.
In the last soft skill class, Mr. Shamsudeen taught us “Product & Service Pitching Strategies”. In this session, we learned the thirteen components in a ‘Pitch Deck Framework”. At the end of the class, take-home lessons were how to pitch with captivating stories and important points investors look out for in a pitch. A Guest Leader- Mrs. Shola Adekoya (Associate CIPM), justshola also took us on a session titled “How to Get and Keep Your Job”. She started by urging us to Dare To Be Different(D2BD) and went on to explain how to excel at interviews, skills needed to keep a job especially in the tech industry, and also ways to set yourself apart from everyone. We had questions on how to overcome anxiety, beat the competition, respond to questions about salaries, and more, which she was happy to answer. Overall, it was an engaging session with valuable lessons.
At the end of the day, we demonstrated our understanding of “product & service pitching” by pitching our team projects to a team of experts who posed as judges. My team “BASCOM Projects” came second amongst five(5) teams. It was an opportunity to learn because we not only practicalized what we learned but also received feedback on how to do better in the future.
I started this article with a quote from Mr. Pishikeni Tukura above because it gave me a lot to think about. TIIDElab continues to be an enabling environment for growth and it can only get better.
My confidence as a person has improved greatly and so have my technical skills. Learning is a continuous process and I’m grateful to TIIDELab for being a huge contributor to my growth.
Thank you for reading and I look forward to sharing more interesting experiences till the end of the fellowship.
