Introduction
Writing my first blog or even getting to say the words "Hi, there. Welcome to my YouTube channel" are things that I never thought I'll do. But still, it isn't a bad idea to write about the little adventures that did get me this far.
Life Before Tech
Growing up and getting through high school, I've always had the dream at that time of being a doctor specializing in pediatrics(Pediatricians are specially trained medical doctors who work with babies, infants, adolescents, and young adults). The idea of being part of a human being's growth till adulthood was soo fascinating and the love I have for children was also a driving force in that decision. That pursuit of that dream did continue up until after I acquired my high school diploma, and then came the enlightenment.
The Enlightenment
Now a month after (September of 2019) I graduated from high school, I did preparatory classes on taking a medicine exam and hopefully getting into a medical school, but I came to a swift realization that this wasn't something I'd really want to dive into at that time and I knew I wouldn't be a hundred percent committed so then I began the search for "Purpose". A simple yet very important seven-letter word in our everyday life. without a purpose, we wouldn't wake up every morning and strive to archive whatever we've plans we've laid down for our lives.
Now, having had a passion for Network Engineering and ever wondering how do computers connect and communicate, a friend of mine invited me to an event which was mostly based on opening the minds of youths to the power of technology and maybe destined or not, the speaker of that event was a Network Engineer at a local Tech solutions company in my town. I, later on, got in contact with him after the event. we, later on, had a talk and he then convinced me on registering for a network engineering program they have been running since they were a CISCO (Cisco Systems is an IT and networking brand that specializes in switches, routers, cybersecurity, and IoT) networking academy.
The Journey
After enrolling in the program(December 2019), specifically the CISCO CCNA(Cisco Certified Network Associate), I did get to meet people who have been in the tech world for a longer period than I have and it was really an eye-opener to see just how much knowledge was out there in the world, then came the hurdles.
in my city, we have been living under a civil crisis for the better part of 3 years. During one faithful day in the month of February 2020, there was heavy gunfire that led to many injuries and death, this later on led to me leaving my town and moving to a different one where I would have to start studies all over. Taking a break for a few months, I enrolled at the Catholic University Institute of Buea and signed up for the Cyber security program they run. Getting through my freshman year, I picked up some programming languages, C and scratch to be precise, and by the end of my freshman year, I had the opportunity to attend a Tech conference held in Buea, SW region of Cameroon that made me get into contact with people from different backgrounds, tech communities, and ecosystems. this made me realize how beautiful and connected the tech world is and how much harder I'll need to work if I am going to attain the level of a Network engineer and even move past that.
Some few months after the summit I got into cloud technology, primarily AWS(Amazon web services) as a means of upskilling and gaining a deeper understanding of underlying network infrastructures and in which I, later on, took the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam and it was a success. this little step gave me the courage to keep pushing on and now I am currently studying for my CCNA and also the 100 days of code python BootCamp by Angela Yu. h
Fast forward to January 2022, after I joined the Nervtek organization (Nervtek is an association of young and dynamic Cameroonians who have the main objective to create impact through technology. We are focused on making his environment better through the help of AI, IoT, robotics, and machine learning), I was appointed as the community lead of my resident town Douala. With a vivid goal in mind, I had after seeing so many skilled people around who aren't able to showcase their talent or even apply it, it is one of my beliefs that everyone capable or anyone willing to learn a new technology do so freely and is able to apply what they've learned in their respective domains. You can see more about the Nervtek Organization here: [nervtek.org]
Motivation
I would say the drive to what makes me want to get better and strive towards achieving my goals isn't totally motivation but more of a habit. As the famous saying goes "we are what we do repeatedly".
I keep this quote from Steve Jobs close to heart:
Conclusion
Being a part of any tech community will help u immensely as you get to network and learn new technologies.
The path to becoming a network engineer is not always as straight forward but with a system put in place and with hard work reaching that destination is just a matter of time.