My Life at School - Aptech Edition 🎓

I’ve been writing my life at school for most of my school years. It has always been a way to reflect on my life at school and share it with my Dad.

This year I’m gladly going to share about arguably my best life at school as well as share a couple of lessons I’ve learned a long the way.

Preface

The Year is 2017; I enroll for a Higher Diploma in Software Engineering at Aptech Computer Education. Normally it’s called university/campus but I use school in this article.

The First Time Is Always the Hardest

My first day at Aptech was quite an adventure. It was probably the third time I had been to the city by myself and despite being to Aptech twice before. I got lost and had to ask my brother for directions 🤦🏽‍♂️

My class was scheduled for 11am but I arrived after an hour. I was already confused and nervous.

Sweat rolled down my chin looking at everyone else in the class as I was asked to sit at the front. Saying hello to my neighbors and only getting one response. It was tough

Joining a new school is always a challenging experience. I don’t really have much to say but it gets easier the second and third time and from there on you start to make friends who make the entire experience memorable.

Overcoming Fear Of Making Friends

Coming from Stone City(Jinja) where everyone was so chill and friendly, the people in the city were quite different.

I was always a shy person when it came to making friends; actually when it came to literally anything.

I didn’t know anyone at Aptech and I wasn’t ready to get to. Luckily a friend of mine had told me he was joining Aptech too so I wasn’t worried about making new friends or anything.

Furthermore, I met one of the guys I had studied with and all of a sudden I knew a couple of guys or to be precise I knew two guys but that was enough for me.

I would always get to school earlier, sit in the lounge and go for my classes when time was up.

One day someone pointed at a sticker on my laptop and he asked “Is that a Linux machine?” I was startled but didn’t understand what he asked so he told me to turn it on, it booted into windows and he was disappointed. He had a laptop with Linux mint and thought I had OpenSuse installed but unfortunately I didn’t even know any other OS apart from Windows. He(Marshud) gave me a lesson to learn and when I got home I immediately did some research on what Linux was. I installed Ubuntu and till this day I use Linux for most of my work.

Making friends isn’t easy, I had to overcome the fear and approach a few people because I needed to learn from them. Other friends approached me (I believe they sensed my fear). I got more confidence and more friends too. Make as many friends as you can, you don’t know where that may lead you to.

Me and Marshud are still close to this day, a friendship that started as a question about Operating Systems.

Handling Pressure & Competition

Phew 😅 this one was tough, my mind was bent on the fact that I was going to find everything hard in class but after a couple of classes of ICDL, everything wasn’t so hard after all.

I was answering questions and completing assignments easily but so were a couple of guys too.

Our tutor would give us assignments before end of class so the first to get it right leaves.

I enjoyed this assignments as long as I passed but when I failed it was tough.

I felt so much pressure of having to prove myself and I tried to figure it out again.

I always kept to myself but my tutor encouraged me to go and get explanations from my classmates. I didn’t like the idea so I struggled so much to compete with them.

After a number of failed attempts, I realized I was doing it wrong.

If you can’t beat them, then join them.

I decided to change my perspective from competing with them to working with them.

This was so much better, because we all became friends and learned so much together.

This is one of the best decisions I’ve made.

Leadership

Throughout my school time, I had never been in a leadership position. I couldn’t have imagined I’d be in one ever.

When I returned for my second semester, the then class representative Dan had left for Canada on a scholarship.

We spent sometime without a representative because no one wanted to do it. Tutors kept bringing it up but we always played dumb until we couldn’t anymore.

One fateful day, it came up again and everyone screamed my name out of no where and that was it.

There was no way I’d refute it and that was a beginning of a great journey of leadership until the end of our tenure.

I learned a lot about leadership, patience and working with people in general. This also gave me confidence to build a community at school as well as take leadership positions in my career.

I’m Forever grateful for this moment. 🙏🏽

Semi Finals ⌛️

When I joined Aptech I enrolled for Higher Diploma in Software Engineering (HDSE) which is 4 semesters and I had never imagined going beyond that.

During this period, I learned a lot in that period and I really didn’t see why I couldn’t stop there and peruse a job then brush up my skills online.

With a half bursary on a line, I was stuck with a decision to make. I’d never gotten a half bursary before so I was happy that I got one now and I didn’t want it to go to waste.

Through my entire tenure everyone I came across advised that I should pursue an Advanced Diploma which is six semesters. I played deaf to all of that until this moment.

I needed a reason to change my mind, so I talked to a friend of mine who had just completed his sixth semester.

He told me those were the most important semesters ever; especially the sixth semester which is a career oriented semester. He added that the tutor was great and had no regrets.

Furthermore, Mom advised me that she needed me to study and complete school as I look for a Job and I listened.

I was now convinced to pursue ADSE.

I had to convince Mom & Dad to let me continue for two more semesters.

Talking to Dad, Mom did most of the convincing. I’m grateful he was able to provide.

Arguably the next couple of semesters would end up being very crucial in my life as I got to start a community at my school, meet a couple of great folks and end up getting a great job opportunity.

Building A Community

Aptech didn’t really have a club or community then, it had no developer culture. All everyone did was show up for classes, have the famous sumbis after and then leave/play games in the lounge.

I had been to couple of meetups at other universities and everything was different there. I wanted the same for Aptech

Luckily I met a couple of friends who wanted something similar and we started a developer community where we’d work with designers and developers to bring out solutions.

Last year Aptech became a Google Developer Students Club and I couldn’t be more excited, thanks to the hard work of Brian, Brooke, Patience and a couple of other great friends.

We still got lots to do but we all start from somewhere. Aluta Continua

Work; A Double Edged Sword

It had always been my dream to get work before leaving campus. I had gotten a few freelance opportunities before but I needed a full time role. I spent most of my time studying and skilling. In case an opportunity came up, I wanted to be ready.

Brian reached out to me with an opportunity to lead a software development team at Adiloits.

I was excited because this is what I had been looking forward to.

Fast forward I met Roger who’s the founder of Adiloits, we had a few discussions and started off with work.

I wrote about my experience here.

A double edged sword; School is exhausting and to me at the time it was everything. When I started to work I made sure this was not an option, I’d attend all my classes without fail.

Unfortunately it gets tough when it’s time to balance work and studying. The rule of thumb is, good grades are as important as the work you’re doing don’t give it up for anything. When you can’t balance choose school, there are always opportunities to work but not always the same opportunities to study.

Finals; Life During a Pandemic 😷

We had a rocky start to our final semester, we had to change our tutor, our class time was changed from 11am to 9am and no one was happy about it or at least I wasn’t.

Shameem, our tutor was a bit different. He was a bit tough and our first class he laid out a couple of rules and everyone wondered if they’d really make it through the semester. 😂

He is a really funny guy though and one of the best tutors I’ve met.

We had just a couple of lessons in person before the pandemic forced all schools to close.

It was a relief for a while since we didn’t have to study, but unfortunately to some of us it wasn’t because it meant we had to stay in school longer.

A couple of months into the nationwide lock down, we started online classes via Microsoft Teams , we had mixed feelings about this and raised concerns about network issues and internet access but Aptech wasn’t buying any of it.

In the first few classes , we were required to keep our cameras on to show our presence and also had to have a pen and book on our table and had to show it to the camera 😅

Yes we did that, it was like kindergarten all over again but it was worth it because we got to note down so many points.

Screen recordings were not allowed and we had to take pictures of our assignments and send to our tutor.

Semester 6 is a very practical semester and needed a lot of practice but our tutor did his best and when restrictions were eased , we had some physical sessions with fellow classmates. It was nice to see them after a long time.

We also received internet bundles that were exclusive to only Teams 😂 I admit that was a nice trick.

Restrictions were eased but we kept having online sessions for a while until schools were opened for finalists.

We had our exams for the first time we had to write our exams by hand, yes I believe they thought we had forgotten how to write 😂

Graduation 👨🏽‍🎓

The icing on the cake; after nearly 4 years at Aptech it was time to leave. It has been an adventure, it was great meeting everyone .

I’d been with a couple of friends since the beginning, I met a couple of awesome people towards the end . Regardless everyone was a blessing.

Once we received the news that we had all excelled in our final exams, everyone was happy and relieved.

Due to the Pandemic our graduation was scheduled for last year(2020) to be an online event of which we didn’t agree at all and we won 😅

Our graduation was pushed to this year(2021) at Africana. To our dismay we would be without the presence of our beloved parents and guardians.

I could feel the pain of my mom when I told her this and feel dad in disbelief when I sent him the invite. I wasn’t happy either and so neither were any of my friends and classmates.

Nonetheless, I asked mom and dad to come and although I had to wave to them in the car. I was filed with Joy to see them around.

We all represented and seeing everyone dressed in gowns was such a delight. We had made it. Sadly it was also a realization that we were now free to take our various paths in life and that we would all choose differently. I made peace with that 🤞🏽

We had a great ceremony, great pictures for the memories and said our goodbyes for the day.

I went for lunch with my family and my brother Muky. We talked a lot about the past, the future and the present.

To everyone who made school worthwhile, I appreciate you 🤝

Mom, Dad, Auntie, Uncle, My sister Momo & Muky, it was great seeing y’all around.

Thank you for everything, I can’t appreciate enough. May God bless you 🙏🏽