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Never had in mind that I’d be doing this, up until someone mentioned it in a Technical Writing Community, asking us to do a year in review, and upon seeing it, I bought into the idea immediately.

Over the last year, I’ve heard and learned a lot about the importance of documenting your journey, and given I’m not particularly great at journaling, I thought this could be an interesting and less stressful way of doing so.

I don’t know how to go about this, so I decided to highlight a few of the major events that happened to me.

So, like a certain popular football journalist will always say, Here We Go!

January — February (ALX Software Engineering)

Funny how this was supposed to be a 12-month training but I quit after the second month (or the first month after probation or whatever it is called).

There was a lot of talk about ALX being quite intensive and how not many people are capable of keeping up, which made me pretty determined to be part of the few who’ll outlast the program.

After making it through the first two months, I had to think about what impact the program was having on me as a wanna-be Software Engineer.

I quit because I was heading nowhere with the program, truth be told, most of the concepts seemed to be way too advanced for me while at times, it was a matter of not having enough time to learn all the necessary skills to carry out a given task.

Tasks were most times assigned daily and sometimes there could be 2–3 tasks with the same deadline for submission. And with ALX operating something like a self-teaching technique where you’re teaching yourself, this means that at times you’d need more time than they’re offering to learn the concepts needed to carry out your tasks.

There were occasional live sessions where mentors got to teach and also gave room for questions, but the majority of the time, you’re responsible for teaching yourself.

As time went by, I got more into trying to meet up with assignment deadlines than actually learning anything.

I was watching tutorials on YouTube and sometimes even copying solutions from YouTube channels which solved the various tasks. After a while, I realized that I wasn’t moving forward if I continued on this path and that led to me deciding to call it quits.

Make no mistake though, I picked up a lot of valuable knowledge and experience during my short stint in the program, part of which includes Git, GitHub, and how to navigate my way around the command line.

All of which I still make use of till date, even as I continue my foray into the world of Frontend Web Development.

May 2023 (Perxels Design Challenge)

The month of May saw me participate in a design challenge organized by Perxels Design School. The challenge was targeted at UI/UX designers and tasked them with carrying out a product revamp of the JAMB website.

Perxels Design Challenge

I came across this challenge when it was posted in my School WhatsApp Tech Community (ABSU Creative Hub) and decided to hop on it as a way of testing out my Frontend skills, despite knowing the challenge was for UI/UX designers.

I knew all I had to do was come up with a design and bring it to life using HTML & CSS, especially seeing as I was seeking a way to put my CSS skills to work.

I entered the competition, joined the WhatsApp community, and participated in all activities carried out during the period of the challenge, including carrying out the daily tasks assigned to us (all of which can be found on my X (formerly Twitter) page).

By the end of the challenge, I made it to the top 50 and was invited to the Grand Finale which was held at Ojodu Berger, Lagos.

Perxels Design Challenge Grand Finale Invitation

This was particularly an important moment for me as it was the second tech event I’d be attending physically and afforded me the chance to meet and network with creatives in the Tech Space.

Pictures from the Live Event

August — September (Writing Streak 3.0)

Writing Streak 3.0 is a 4-week Technical Writing Bootcamp organized by Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador (MLSA) and designed to take individuals from learning how to write articles to earning from the articles.

Again, I was able to come across this training through my School’s WhatsApp Tech Community, which highlights the importance of communities to building both your personal and professional career.

Throughout this Bootcamp, I attended several live sessions where I got to learn the fundamentals of Technical Writing such as how to write in active voice, how to use paragraphs, lists & tables, how to write short, clear sentences alongside how to use markdowns, headers, and text formatting.

While taking in the lessons, we (myself and other participants) were also required to submit an article each week of the Bootcamp, which is then reviewed by peers and corrections made before the article can be published online.

Writing Streak 3.0 Certificate of Participation

The Four Articles I wrote during the streak are listed below

*The Essentials of Technical Writing

*Styling the Web — Bootstrap vs TailwindCSS

*5 CSS Shorthand You Probably Didn’t Know About

*A Beginner’s Guide to Single-Page Applications

All of them bar the first one (The Essentials of Technical Writing) can be found on both my Medium and Hashnode accounts.

These are some of my major highlights from the year 2023 especially as it pertains to the world of tech.

Other highlights also include the fact that I tried my hands at the HNG Internship, I succeeded in making it past Stage One but couldn’t carry on as Stage Two was to be carried out using React, a JavaScript framework that I haven’t yet learned.

In between all this were a few personal tasks here and there, including some tasks from frontendmentor.io and also my Personal Portfolio which I built from scratch using just HTML, TailwindCSS (my first time using it), and JavaScript.

All in all, 2023 was the year in which I tried out my hands at a lot of things, some of which worked out and some which didn’t.

But even in the ones that didn’t work out the way I expected, there was a lot of valuable experience init (lol😂) which ended up making me a better person and techie than the one who started 2023.

2024 is the year for a lot of focused and targeted work and less of the trial and error that came with 2023. To make this a reality, part of my plans for the coming year is to enroll in AltSchool and also to write about 50 Technical Articles (wow, sounds like quite a lot now that I’m typing it out).

I hope that by the time I come back to this review towards the tail end of 2024, I’d be coming with a big grin seeing as I was able to make this reality come to pass.

Adios.