In 2016, I took a course on visual design at a place called New Horizon, an ict solutions institute, I instantly fell in love with producing and seeing my ideas come to life, when i was done with the course, I decided to give web design a trial after a few acquaintances I made at the institute recommended it. I arrived at the lesson quite late and spent the entire time feeling disoriented, I spent three months taking that course but I never understood anything, all i remember now is writing a lot of divs but having no idea what a div was and constantly long codes from the instructor's projector everyday without any explanation because the instructor assumed we all started the course at the same time. After taking the course i decided to stick with graphic design because it just felt right.

Then 2020 started and covid happened and it was time for me to decide if I really wanted to continue with graphic design or try something else. After pondering on it for a while I chose graphic design and enrolled in a few classes on Udemy to broaden my knowledge, things were going great and I felt confident in my capacity to work as a freelancer. I was getting jobs from friends and referrals but after a while I started to notice that I wasn't freelancing the right way, I didn't know how to network and it became exhausting trying to come up with designs considering some client's high expectations and realizing how poorly compensated graphic artists are. I felt the need to try something different, i'm still young anyway, what did i have to lose... So i changed my career path and gave programming a try and got consumed by it.

I initially assumed that all I needed to do to find employment was to grasp HTML and CSS; I knew nothing about javascript, frameworks, or the concepts of frontend, backend, or fullstack development. I had to go through many courses on Udemy until I found one that was worthwhile, the course was taught by Rob Percival and although it was outdated, it was very beginner friendly.

When the year 2021 began, I was still studying having no idea of the duration it takes to self learn programming also being completely unaware of bugs and confusion I would encounter in the future. Nonetheless, I progressed from Html and Css to javascript in June 2021, and it was the most perplexing thing I had ever seen. I constructed algorithms with errors spanning numerous lines that at the time seemed like gibberish. Although it was discouraging, I knew I couldn't give up.

I once came across a post on free code camp's forum from someone who was struggling to understand javascript concepts, and it instantly brought tears to my eyes because I could identify with their struggle. As I continued reading, I stumbled on a suggestion to try Angela Yu's course, and that has been the first best choice I've made on this journey. I had never encountered an instructor who could make complex ideas appear so simple. I didn't mind starting her web development course from scratch because it was well worth it.

Although the course was incredibly out-of-date, I pushed myself to learn new techniques and read through a lot of new documentations. Her course also featured several code-along projects that were enjoyable and challenging.

In October 2021, I paid for an online bootcamp called Femcode Academy because I wanted to learn as much as possible while I was concurrently enrolled in Angela's course on Udemy. The bootcamp introduced me to important web concepts that I was unaware of, but it ended quickly due to a change in the curriculum, and I found it difficult to understand what the instructor was teaching about React because I didn't feel like I knew enough javascript to understand either frameworks or libraries. However, I am unable to fast-forward through Angele Yu's course because node.js and databases are covered before React.

I continued taking Angela's course even though I was completely lost at this point, the bootcamp was over, and all I could confidently create were static websites with some basic javascript and these were as a result of Angela's course and her many code along projects. However, it kept frustrating me because it was the backend aspect and the course was so out of date that her instructions weren't working and the documentations were different, call it learning amidst the frustration.