I sincerely don’t know how to begin writing this, so I will just start from here, my name is Eyimofe Ayomidele Pinnick, but you can call me Mofe for short.
I am an 18 year old living in Nigeria; I am also a Senior/ 3rd Year student of Redeemer’s University studying in Computer Science. Let me stop with all these introductions because this is looking an about in a résumé😅😅.
But before I start all these, Let me say a story of how I got into Tech firstly, I’ve loved games when I was young as 6, whether it was playing Sonic The Hedgehog on my friend’s Gameboy or freestyling my skills on GTA Vice City on mom’s desktop. When I turned 8, the intuition changed to how to make them. I also loved fixing circuits of our remote control, just saying😀😀.
In my 8th grade/ JS2 of secondary school, in our Computer Studies class, we were taught about the generations of computer, now the 5th generation talked mostly about computers of the future; robots, self-driving and flying cars, intelligent systems.
That’s when I knew this was what I wanted to study, want I wanted my career to be focused on, I coined a term for it “Advanced Technology” because it was technology so advanced for us to see how much it is, 7 years later I will find out that this innovative ideas have coined long before I was born, under the name called “Artificial Intelligence”.
So I wanted to study Computer Science since I was 10, after some time I stopped researching about all these, cause I was doing amazing well in business- related classes, and my peers and parent convinced me I’ll be better in finance/ business field, especially cause my dad studied in Economics.
I eventually went to Science class, and in my 10th grade/SS1, I got introduced to coding with HTML, we had a class and a young teacher (who would later be mentor) taught us the language of the web, my classmates studied this class just to pass but I was more interested in it, I saw it as more of an invention that changed the world as we knew it (Yeah I was a high dreamer😂😂), and I got addicted to learning it.
I was really good at it, and my mates hailed and praised me, they called me a genius, “A Young Zuckerberg”, I never knew I was far from learning anything.
I was in a federal boarding school, so we were prohibited to bring computer gadgets, but that didn’t stop me, with every free break period, every Saturday sometimes Sundays I have(I was a pretty pesky fellow), I’ll run and meet this man in his office to teach me more, I’ll learn on his laptop, or practice with some of the school’s computer systems.
I asked him a very important question; “Where can I study more of this?” he told me I will learn it studying Computer Science in college.
Thanks for reading up to this part!!
I got admitted into Redeemer’s University, Nigeria to study Computer Science, I was so thrilled about our classes, I thought here in school, they’ll teach me everything I’ll need to learn about A.I (I thought it was still Advanced Technology here). But I was way wrong, The curriculum taught about A.I in the 4th year and I had only one Computer Science Course in each semester of my first year, the remaining courses, were the ones I ran away from in high school; Chemistry, Physics, Biology all that.
To add to it, the other computer courses I had in my later years didn’t relate to AI, with all these I gave up on my dream, I became what most college students are; Clueless.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life, I just gave myself the idea that when I’m older I’ll find out eventually (very dangerous thinking).
At the end of my 1st year, my mum got me an internship with a Tech Company , there I learned what real programming was; that is programming languages, how many there were, what they could do.
I was amazed, but one stuck in my head, it was Python. I heard before from my high school mate before (what a funny name I thought), he said it was used mostly in gaming, but now I knew about A.I and that Python could be used for it. This was in the summer of 2019.
I didn’t program Python until February 2020, on my birthday I promised myself I’ll learn until on that day. I learnt from SentDex’s channel and his website. After learning the fundamentals, I was ready to study Machine Learning, the field of A.I that interested me, but I allowed self-doubt get to me. I got afraid of the mathematical aspect of it.
I though I’ll fail woefully if I took at a career, and at that time and currently, AI, Machine Learning, Data Science isn’t really a hot topic/career in Nigeria. So I thought if I failed I’m become jobless and a failure to my parents.
So I decided to learn Django Web Framework first. I wasn’t a huge fan of Web Development since my high school days but it had jobs in my country.
Learning Django was great, I learned through the project-based way, so I created some apps, even though were small and basic, I was proud of it.
But later I always got frustrated with Django, it wasn’t as if I was bad in it, but I wasn’t too interested in it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved building with Django, but you can’t force love on something your mind isn’t set on.
So I failed in most projects I did, even if it was a small bug or typo. I also had a bad laptop, but I put on the pressure on me. That I was a failure and born to be one. I hated my own self. So I decided to give myself up.
This was about in August 2020, I felt really down and the events of a global pandemic and crisis in the world, added to it. I used YouTube for a way out of this depression.
Then YouTube did the best thing, it recommended one of Ken Jee’s videos. “How I would have learnt Data Science, if I started again”. I didn’t really know the difference between DS and Machine Learning, but I knew they were somewhat in the same field.
But I learnt some fragments of it, watching videos on Ken Jee’s channel, and I stumbled on a video of #66DaysOfData, and I knew that in 2021, I’m not holding back again. I’m facing my fears and I’m going to take them down before they take me down first.
I love the standards of both Data Science and Machine Learning, and I am in love with both fields and I don’t know which one to have a career to be sincere.
So I’ll explore both paths and see the one that works best for me, seeing I’m still 18 and young, I’ll take this option.
School is great for a community, networking and friends, but to be honest, it’s not teaching me what I want in life.
This is my story, I’ll be journaling my journey here to greatness, and I hope you’ll follow me through because I’m using this for accountability so when I feel down or want to give up, I know that I have people here I can’t disappoint.
Thank you!!